Staff Profiles

Teaching on select modules across the undergraduate and postgraduate Film Studies programmes

Research grants and awards

2017 - British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship

2011 - Arts and Humanities Research Council BGP Doctoral Award – Film and TV

2010 - Sue Wilson Humanities Scholarship, University of Southampton

Further information

www.facebook.com/bulgarian.film.audiences/

Journal articles

• Nedyalkova M, 'Rhetoric of Belonging and Transnational Appropriation in the Text, Development and Marketing of the Bulgarian Popular Feature Love.net'
  Open Screens 4 (2) (2021)
  ISSN: 2516-2888 eISSN: 2516-2888
  Abstract

  This article focuses on issues of representation and belonging, in an attempt to uncover how contemporary popular cinema in Bulgaria, shaped by recent cultural legislation, caters to national sensitivities while at the same time making the link with the global film industries. The Bulgarian popular feature Love.net (Ilian Djevelekov, 2011) focuses on the role of the Internet as facilitating love, relations and communication in the contemporary world. On a textual level, and similarly to Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003), it explores the six degrees of separation theory, implicitly advocating for a world of interconnectedness. While reflecting on universal challenges in human relationships, the film also highlights particularly local issues linked to self-colonisation, Eastern cultural influences, moral disillusionment and increased consumerism post-communism. Contextually, Love.net is an example of the shift towards treating filmmaking in Bulgaria as a business as much as a cultural venture. It emerged as part of broader European trends, which put an emphasis on film development, marketing and stars, with the aim to counter Hollywood’s dominant market position. Love.net created a sense of virtual belonging among the local online community, allowing them to participate in the film’s development and engage with its interactive marketing. Transnational stars provided a further point of contact and involvement. Through its mixed cast featuring home-grown and locally popular foreign actors, Love.net both channelled and challenged Hollywood, positioning European cinema as similar in glamour and attraction but different in identity. The text and the context of the film’s creation highlight questions of onscreen representation and anxieties over cultural belonging, transcending the mere commercial imperatives of local popular cinema.

  Website 
• Nedyalkova M, 'Spisanie Kino/Kino Magazine and its role in reflecting and developing Bulgarian film culture'
  Studies in Eastern European Cinema 9 (1) (2018)
  ISSN: 2040-350X eISSN: 2040-3518
  Website 

Book chapters

• Nedyalkova M, 'Family, memories and borders: Europe in the films of Stephan Komandarev' in Gergely, G. Hayward, S. (ed.), The Routledge Companion to European Cinema, Routledge (2022)
  ISBN: 9780367461850
  Website 
• Nedyalkova M, '‘She Stole it from Beyoncé!’: Transnational Borrowing in Bulgarian Pop-folk Music Videos and Audience Reaction to the Practice' in Mazierska E., Gyori Z. (ed.), Popular Music and the Moving Image in Eastern Europe, Bloomsbury (2018)
  ISBN: 978-1-5013-3717-8 eISBN: 978-1-5013-3720-8
  Website 
• Nedyalkova M, 'Festivals Gone Digital – A Case-Study of Netcinema.bg and the Online European Film Festival in Bulgaria' in Dudková J, Mišíková K (ed.), Transformation Processes in Post-Socialist Screen Media, Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (2016)
  ISBN: 978-80-8195-008-7
  Website 

Reviews

• Nedyalkova M, review of An Insider Snapshot of the Recent (Trans-)National Developments in Balkan Cinema, in Studies in Eastern European Cinema 14 (2) (2022) ISSN: 2040-350X eISSN: 2040-3518
  Website 

Other publications

• Nedyalkova M, Treveri Gennari D, 'International Film Audiences - Part 1'
  

  A themed section of the Participations Journal, co-edited with Daniela Treveri Gennari

  (2021) Website 

Other experience

April 2016 – December 2016

Data collection for Mediating Cultural Encounters through European Screens (MeCETES), University of York

 

January 2015 – May 2015

Staff-student management committee member of the University of Southampton Intercultural Connections Project

 

February 2013 – June 2015

Pre-masters teaching assistant, University of Southampton

Further information

soton.academia.edu/MayaNedyalkova

orcid.org/0000-0003-2636-8535

twitter.com/Maya_Nedyalkova

linkedin.com/in/mayanedyalkova/