As "Vreme" learns, the new artistic director of Bitef is Miloš Lolić, and the new date of the festival is the end of November. To make this decision, the Bitef Board waited for the new rules of the City Assembly
September will be the month of festivals in Belgrade this year: Fest, Bitef, March Festival, "Seven Magnificent"... Unless the City Assembly decides that some of them will take a break this year
The city assembly did not respond to the proposal of the Bitef Board that Nikita Milivojević, the previous artistic director of the festival, continue the work he had started, and he wrote a letter thanking him for the offer. Svetozar Cvetković, chairman of the Board, believes that a solution will be reached after all
The changes to the rules of the city's cultural manifestations, which were announced by the City Assembly back in March, are unlikely to be implemented. Will there be time to implement them until September when Bitef and Fest start, that is, will they be held at all
The Bitef board refused to decide on the program of this year's Bitef, as recommended by the Secretariat for Culture, because it is not according to the Festival Rules, and proposes that Nikita Milivojević be the artistic director for the second term as well
Svetozar Cvetković, the president of the Bitef Board, insists that the City Assembly respect the Rules of this festival and resolve the legal crisis in which he found himself after the City Assembly did not appoint the artistic director of Bitef
According to the City Assembly, there are no obstacles for Bitef to continue preparations for this year's edition. However, according to the rules by which the festival operates - there is. Did the announcement of the city secretary of culture that there will soon be changes and redefinition of cultural manifestations refer to that?
The Assembly of the City of Belgrade appointed board members for the seven main festivals in the city. Dušan Kovačević heads the Fest Board
According to the decision of the City Assembly, Nikita Milivojević's mandate was not extended, and the new artistic director of Bitef was not elected. Thus, the list of international festivals whose work has been stopped by the City Assembly during the last month has been increased to four. It is assumed that the reasons are ineligibility and the Expo
Ksenija Radulović:
Opening borders - professional Bitef reception in Serbia;
Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, 2023.
This year's Bitef began very dynamically from the very opening and was what we think Bitef should be - a festival that brings together creative, innovative and socially aware artists who reflect on the relationship between theater and contemporary society.
We are transcribing in full the speech Milo Rau opened Bitef on Wednesday, which is still being talked about. "Scholz called on Serbs to make sacrifices for Europe, for so-called 'sustainable' energy." 'Europe' means, of course - Volkswagen. The displacement of 20000 families and the poisoning of fertile soil for future generations. Yes, that's what 'sustainable' means - sustainable in death," he said, among other things
About freedom, human rights, aging, rape, the planet, theater, and many other things that are important to us now, 10 performances of the new Bitef will talk, for which 60 percent of the tickets have already been sold.
With discounts of 20 and 10 percent when buying tickets online, Bitef promotes this type of sale as a practice that reduces printing and creating unnecessary waste
Ksenija Đurović, part of the selection team of the Bitef festival, explains that a combination of lucky circumstances helped them bring the oldest theater in the world to Belgrade. Apart from Comedie Française, this year will also see the use of the drug GHB for the first time
During his latest guest appearance in Belgrade, the great director, choreographer and visual artist will promote the book, which he says is only a manual and not a method. The book was published by the Institute for Artistic Play, whose students Fabr will be a visiting professor
There were outstanding titles, festivals, awards and successes worth remembering. And yet, they were overshadowed by wrong decisions based on interests that are not universal and relegated to the memory of 2023
The play "Jeanne", which she directed in Stockholm and for which she just received the Bitefa main prize, is a kind of return of Anja Suša to this festival, of which she was the selector.
Overcome wildernesses, bypass traps, break through fears, and find strength again - this is the message that unites the performances of this year's "Polyphony", the traditional accompanying program of Bitef.
On Wednesday, the 57th Bitef begins with the German play "Children of the Sun", respecting the continuity with the previous concepts of the festival
"For my taste, so-called current plays often have a kind of superficial didacticism. When I say that, I mean a certain imposition of ideas on the viewer, what he should think and the like. In the theater, I'm not so interested in someone's intelligence, what remains hidden, inferred, is always much more important to me than what is said directly."
Nikita Milivojević, the new artistic director, and his selection team have chosen nine plays which, judging by the first information, continue to boldly speak about our present, like the previous Bitefs.
Brave and unscrupulous Bitef, which will be open to all audiences, is the guideline that the new artistic director Nikita Milivojević and his team of selectors Ksenija Đurović and Tijana Grumić will try to implement in the following programs of this festival.
Thanks to the new rules of the City Assembly, the government has the opportunity to influence the artistic and programming conception of 14 cultural manifestations of importance for Belgrade: it chooses a selector and appoints the president of the manifestation's board from among its own ranks. The new president of the Bitef Festival Committee is the Secretary of Culture of the City. For now, Bitef is working as if nothing happened, and they expect that it won't
Public reactions regarding the appointment of Nikita Milivojević as the new artistic director of Bitef are negative, but not because of this well-known director who succeeded Ivan Medenica, but because of the Secretariat for Culture of the city, which is the reason for Medenica's departure
"A situation has arisen in which the city secretary is directly pushing me to break the law, to falsely present myself to foreign partners as the artistic director of Bitef. I didn't agree to that"
In the Youth Center, a cycle of debates begins on the country from which the current Serbia originated, where young researchers, unencumbered by either Yugoslavia or the war in which it disappeared, will analyze its good and bad sides. It is expected that we will all learn something in the end
