Return to Byzantium — The Art and Life of Lilian Broca
a documentary by Adelina Suvagau
Illuminating artistic inspiration
The remarkable life journey of Canadian artist Lilian Broca is dramatically portrayed in Return to Byzantium: The Art and Life of Lilian Broca, a 50-minute film produced by Sonia Productions in co-production with Romanian National Television, scheduled for release in February 2012.
After a lifetime dedicated to art, bringing her international recognition and awards, Lilian Broca returns to the country of her birth, Romania, for the first time in 52 years. The film employs dramatic “flashback” recreations of Lilian’s past, representing memories of her experiences as a child, teenager and adult, as well as her search to understand religion, mythology, legends and symbols in order to regain a sense of her roots.
Broca awakened to her artistic nature at age seven, when her parents enrolled her in art classes. The country’s Soviet-dominated culture, however, discouraged self-expression and imagination. Her first glimpse of real art happened in her neighbourhood church: there, on a wall was a brilliant Byzantine icon illuminated by a shaft of golden sunlight. Though lacking religious reference for Broca, the icon’s radiant splendour held her in its thrall, belying the otherwise drab, grey world in which she lived.
