Svetozar Cvetković: We insist on respecting the Bitef Rules

As is known, Bitef festival is in crisis. It was created due to a different interpretation of the Previla festival. The city assembly acts as if it has completed its part of the obligations towards this festival by appointing the Board, although the Rules state that it still has to determine artistic director. The newly appointed members of the Board insist on this, especially the president Svetozar Cvetković.

On this occasion, today (Friday) a meeting was held between the City Secretary for Culture Nataša Mihailović Vacić and the President of the Bitef Festival Committee, Svetozar Cvetković. An agreement has been reached that portends the resolution of the Bitef festival's legal crisis.

Svetozar Cvetković for the "Vremena" portal first emphasizes that "the Board has not been constituted yet, we are only promoted, because Bitef is in a legal vacuum".

He reminds that "The City Assembly dismissed the current artistic director Nikita Milivojević and did not appoint a new one, as stipulated in the Rules of Bitef. Both I and the entire Board insist that the Rules be satisfied, especially now, in a situation where we all, on both sides, are trying to respect laws and institutions. And for me, Bitef is an institution."

That's why, says Cvetković, they agreed that "Bitef theater, as the executive producer of the festival, will ask the Secretariat for Culture of the City for an interpretation of how to legally get out of the situation in which Bitef is without an artistic director."

At the same time, he reminds that the Rules state that Bitef has both a Board and an artistic director, and that the artistic director creates and chooses the program, proposes it to the Board, and the latter either approves it or not.

"All this is happening terribly late, because the Rules dictate that the Board must adopt the program no later than 60 days before the start of Bitef, and we still don't even have an artistic director," says Cvetković.

"I understand that for some generations Bitef does not mean what it means to us who have been associated with it since Tito's time, but it means to us. Don't forget that Bitef has a great reputation in the whole world, and that's why I would never want anything to happen that would jeopardize that. After all, that's why I accepted to be the head of its Board," said Svetozar Cvetković.