Elena Trenchev

Professor Dr. Elena Trencheva is the head of the bachelor's program in "Film and Television Design" at the National Academy for Theater and Film Arts "Krastyo Sarafov", established in 2017, and the head of the master's program in "Design for interactive audiovisual products", launched in 2023.

She has taught courses such as "Costume Design in the Screen Arts", "Previsualisation and Storyboarding", "Set, Costume and Props" and "Visual Design of the Script" since 2003.

She actively works as a production designer and costume designer in a number of Bulgarian feature and documentary films, web series and sitcoms, among which "Yatagan" (dir. Andrey Andonov, 2020), "The Blessed" (dir. Stanimir Trifonov, 2020), "Farewell, Johnny!" (dir. Konstantin Burov, 2020) "Geshev" (dir. Vasil Barkov, 2018), "Feeling of Intolerance" (dir. Boya Harizanova, 2018), "Not like that, brother!", "# Kifla" and others.

In 2007, she defended her thesis "Semiotics of Costume in Science Fiction Film", which won a research competition of the National Culture Fund and was published under the title "From Metropolis to the Matrix" (2009).

From 2013 to 2015, she was a post-doctoral researcher at Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland. There she conducted research on the topic "Representations of Finnish identity in early Finnish cinema 1919-1929" and participated in the research project "Costume Methodologies - Building Methodological Tools for Research in the Field of Costume Design", funded by the Finnish Academy of Sciences. She is the curator of the exhibition "Told by costume/Puvut kertovat", held at Orion Cinema, Helsinki, March 2015.

In 2016, she presented her habilitation thesis "Violating Accuracy or the verisimilitude of costume in historical film".

Prof. dr. Elena Trencheva participates in a number of scientific forums and is the author of scholarly articles in Bulgarian and English.

Currently, she is the Vice-rector of International affairs and projects at NATFA and a member of the FilmEU Steering Committee, as NATFA is among the eight partners in the first European university in Film and Media Arts.