Current story about Bitef Festival it seems complicated, one would say - you don't know who is doing what, but it is not like that. It is very clear what and who is not doing what they should.
What did the City Assembly do?
Here is some basic information:
The Assembly of the City of Belgrade, as the founder of Bitef Festival, appoints its artistic director and Board, and gives the mandate to Bitef Theater to realize it.
Na session on March 6, the Assembly noted that Nikita Milivojević artistic director and his selection team (Ksenija Đurović and Tijana Grumić)'s mandate expired, and she did not appoint his successor. It just is appointed the Festival Board.
The contract between the City Assembly and Bitef Theater as the producer of the festival has not yet been signed.
So, it deviated from the practice according to which this contract was signed at the beginning of the year, that is, according to which the new artistic director was appointed at the same session of the Assembly where the previous one was dismissed.
This brought into question the realization of the festival. Namely, today, March 27, Bitef has no artistic director and producer, and not a single performance for the September edition of the festival has yet been contracted. There are only agreements on five performances, which were completed by Nikita Milivojević's team.
Shifting responsibility
Now comes the part that makes this story complicated.
Nataša Mihailović Vacić, city secretary for culture, believes that the founder did everything he needed to - he founded the Board. And that this is all that is expected from the Assembly.
As she explained to "Večernji novosti", the Board "manages the festival, so it is up to them to decide on the program, as well as whether and who will be hired in the selection team. Whether one selector or more, whether they will cooperate with the previous artistic director or take over the role themselves - they will decide in agreement with the Bitef Theater. There are no obstacles to the work," she said.
Nataša Mihailović Vacić was until recently the president of the Bitef Board, so one would expect her to know that what she says is not written in the Bitef Rules.
Namely, in Article 6 it is written "The Art Director is appointed by the Assembly of the City of Belgrade, from among established personalities in the field of culture, for a period of two years." According to Article 10, "The Artistic Director prepares and proposes to the Bitef Board the concept and program of Bitef, the concept of special and supporting Bitef programs, as well as the final Bitef program", and according to Article 8 "The Bitef Board determines the Bitef program", the program prepared (selected) by the artistic director.
It seems that the City Assembly wants to transfer its part of the obligations to the Board, although this has never been decided anywhere, as well as that it wants to create the impression that everything is in the best possible order with Bitef.
It's all in the Rules.
The president of the newly elected Bitef Board is an actor Svetozar Cvetkovic, including the former director of "Atelier 212". His extraordinary artistic integrity is currently the biggest hope that the Bitef festival will overcome the resulting crisis. When asked by the "Vremena" portal for a comment, between the rehearsal at Hartefakt and tonight's premiere at the Belgrade Drama Theater, he said that everything is written in the rules of the festival, that he has a meeting with the secretary of culture tomorrow, and suggested that we talk to each other after that.
Let's mention two more elements of this current story about Bitef:
According to Nataša Mihailović Vacić, and as an argument that everything is as it should be with Bitef, the City Assembly allocated about 30 million dinars for this year's edition. She did not state that it was 10 million less than last year.
But that's why, and incidentally, she mentioned that "otherwise, all our events have rules that are outdated and must be adjusted to the real situation and improved. We want to define each event more precisely and determine its specificity, which will be discussed at one of the next sessions."
She did not state what the real situation was, nor what type of more precise definition was involved, unless she was referring to priority state projects and the government's need to adapt the Bitef program to their taste.
