The story of Mara Petrova Noninska-Miyateva, also known by the pseudonym Mara Lipina, begins far from the big city – in the village of Borovan, where she was born in 1883. As a child, she acted in community center productions, and her artistic talent quickly stood out. After high school in Veliko Tarnovo, she became a teacher, but her life took a completely different direction. She was fired for spreading socialist ideas, and fate brought her to the great actress Roza Popova, who reached out to her and directed her to the theater.
Thus, Mara ended up in the troupe of the Plovdiv Municipal Theater. Under the hills, she not only built her acting career, but also met love in the person of actor and theater director Georgi Miyatev. It was from here that her path to cinema began.
In 1910, the young Vasil Gendov was looking for an actress for the first Bulgarian film “A Bulgarian is a Gallant”. The role required a woman with character – confident, modern and brave enough to transform into a cunning seductress who plays a persistent cavalier. At that time, this was a real challenge, because cinema in our country did not yet have a good reputation, and the appearance of a woman on screen was perceived almost as a scandal. Mara accepted, but also paid a high price for her audacity.
During the filming in the center of Sofia, passers-by insulted her, called her “shameless” and other insulting petticoats, and the kids even threw stones at the film crew. According to the archives, at one point the actress was attacked by an angry man.
Today this sounds almost absurd, but at that time a woman in front of the camera was enough reason for public outrage.
The film itself was released five years late, and Mara did not attend the premiere. It is believed that she wanted to avoid another wave of criticism of herself and the theatrical class. Although she is listed as Mara Lipina in the film, everyone already knows who is behind the role. However, the story does not end there.
After the scandals surrounding the film, the actress left the Plovdiv troupe and continued her career at the National Theater, where she quickly became a favorite of the audience. She played in productions such as “Hamlet”, “The Inspector General” and “Vampire”. Two years after finishing work on the film, she starred in another – “The Baron” by Kevork Kuyumjian. Her desire to improve herself took her to Rome in 1919, where she studied stagecraft for two years. She left this world 12 days before her 43rd birthday, at the peak of her creative powers.
But she remains in history as the woman who dared to stand in front of the camera when almost no one believed that cinema had a future in our country. And perhaps that is precisely why she seems so contemporary today – talented, free-thinking and a bit bolder than the times she lived in.
In 2010, an award for a debut female role in Bulgarian cinema was established in her name.
