“1000 Years Witness of the Light” is a documentary film about the Bigorski Monastery, commemorating the grand jubilee of the monastery, capturing the spiritual monastic continuity through the centuries. In an interview with MIA, the director of the film, Ilija Iko Karov, states that this film talks about love, existence, forgotten values, spiritual transformation, and is a moral journey upwards towards eternity.
The film’s premiere will be held on April 15 at 8 PM, and it will also be broadcasted on the National Service, on YouTube, and shared on the official Facebook pages of the film and the Bigorski Monastery.
“Every thousand years in the Bigorski Monastery, a flower blooms, testifying to another beauty, not of this world. This is precisely the fifth element that gives rise to all those known four elements, it is that beauty which many enlightened and philosophically aware people have placed at the center, as the essence of wisdom. And this film is exactly about that beauty that once saved the world,” says director Karov about the film on Bigorski.
Karov mentions that when working on the film, considering the everyday life in which we are attacked by various ideologies and messages, he felt it was a moral journey, not towards the past or the future, but upwards towards eternity.
“What we experienced there was not our privilege, but the Bigorski Monastery is open to everyone, and it is simply something that everyone has the right to receive their part of it. To get their answer, specifically for me, it was a journey towards the truth, towards the light, and nothing less than that,” evaluates the director.
Karov states that they filmed the movie without financial support, but he and the entire team received much more in return.
“We simply did not need financial support. We heartily and without hesitation donated our fees, it never occurred to any of us to ask for any money. In return, we received much more, something that we cannot spend in a lifetime, but on the contrary, we can multiply because light and love are the only two elements in our life that when shared, they multiply,” says director Karov.
He adds that the monastery has its own irrevocable heartbeat, its own irrevocable tempo that has been repeating since the beginning of time.
“That is the Athonite typikon, which our Bishop Partenij carries and renews in the distant year of 1995, stepping over the threshold of the Bigorski Monastery. It is not easy to talk or film the monks, let alone, for example, a monk like Father Partenij, who has lived Christ-like in the same room for almost 30 years, where he settled as a 24-year-old boy when he arrived at the monastery,” Karov adds.
In the documentary, several people share their testimonies on how the Bigorski Monastery helped them to know themselves and change their previous way of life. It is well known that the Bigorski Monastery has programs to assist addicts of various vices.
“In Bigorski, there are no ‘them’, ‘those’, or ‘these’. So, you are a human being there. We all have problems, some bigger, some smaller, it’s just that we live in such a time and the aesthetics of the time are such that we like to highlight others’ problems facing them in a way that makes ours seem much smaller. Therefore, absolutely there are no ‘those’ people. There, I met many people and from all those people living in the monastery who are not monks, of course, because there are also lay workers. Lay workers are people who, for some reason, simply work for the monastery because Bigorski is indeed a big city. I often jokingly say a little town up on the Bistra mountain. And it’s fascinating, in Orthodoxy, there is one, I don’t know how to characterize it – forgive me if I’m wrong, those better informed – I’ll call it a discipline – metanoia. Metanoia is actually to kill the old man in yourself and to be transformed Christ-like in the name of love as a new person and for that, again I’ll mention, grandfather Partenij, is most responsible,” says Karov.
Source: Fokus.mk
