Everything Ends, the new film by celebrated Croatian director Rajko Grlić, had its Belgrade premiere in October and was met with a resounding ovation. The rolling of the credits ended with a list of all the countries participating in its production: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey. One of the producers was also Belgrade native Uliks Fehmiu, who has long been resident in New York. The music was written by Skopje native Duke Boyadzijev, who has also been resident in NYC for many years.
This film could be said to demonstrate the ‘brotherhood and unity’ of the region when it comes to cinematography. However, Grlić is a unique filmmaker who has amassed a large body of work, so this film primarily testifies to his personal biography, as an artist who emerged and matured in Yugoslavia, and who didn’t catch the plague of nationalism when the country collapsed. Nor did this scourge afflict his former Yugoslav friends, with whom he has continued to collaborate to this day. He considers his life choice as having been the only one possible in a situation in which the Balkan region is increasingly succumbing to the factor of the ‘unbearable weight of its own existence.’
Instead of governments and institutions, it was the artists themselves that first started collaborating after the dust had settled on the wars of the ‘90s. Still, this relates only to a small number of projects that are either individual collaborations or collaborations linked to the EU’s Creative Europe and Euro Image programmes. It remains rare to see institutional cooperation at the state level.
Haris Pašović:
Audiences in all countries of the region express an exceptional interest in joint cultural programmes, but there’s no political will for that because conflict is still nurtured as a political instrument
Prominent Bosnian theatre director Haris Pašović believes this is an error of both state policy and artists themselves.
“That’s because audiences in all countries of the region express an exceptional interest in joint cultural programmes and projects by artists from the Yugoslav region. There is no political will, because conflict is still nurtured as a political instrument and artists are often conformists, or are simply lazy. Where collaboration exists – as with the RUTA festival, in the independent sector or in individual guest performances by actors, directors, musicians, visual artists and dancers – the results are almost always outstanding. However, as is the case with most other activities, there won’t be any major effects until more money becomes available in this domain, despite culture and art being major factors of freedom of speech, peace, and multiethnicity,” explains Pašović.
This theatre director and professor of the University of Sarajevo’s Academy of Performing Arts is author and director of the play A World of Possibilities, which was co-produced by the East West Centre Sarajevo, Novi Sad’s Serbian National Theatre, Zagreb’s Tala Dance Centre, and Budva’s Theatre City festival. This play has toured five countries and is still being performed as part of the Creative Europe programme.
Jug Radivojević:
The Belgrade Drama Theatre has been most recognisable in recent years for striving to address global issues with partners from abroad, crossbreeding different views of reality
When it comes to regional and international cooperation, the Belgrade Drama Theatre undoubtedly leads the way in establishing such links at multiple levels: via the RUTA and Naši Dani (Our Days) festivals and more than 20 co-productions created over the previous five years in cooperation with theatres from around the region and with the ‘Creative Europe’ fund.
RUTA, the Regional Union of Theatres, was created on the basis of the initiative of versatile Belgrade Drama Theatre Director Jug Radivojević. Representatives of six renowned theatres from the territory of the former Yugoslavia signed the Protocol on Cooperation in the City of Belgrade Assembly on 18th October 2019. With this Protocol, six theatres joined RUTA: the Belgrade Drama Theatre, Ljubljana City Theatre, Podgorica City Theatre, Drama Theatre Skopje, Sarajevo’s Chamber Theatre 55, and Zagreb’s Ulysses Theatre.
RUTA member theatres have come together around the idea of organising theatre festivals in the capitals of the countries of the region, realising co-productions and implementing mutual guest performances. The envisaged dynamic is for the RUTA festival to be held throughout the year, appearing in a different city every other month: Belgrade in December, Ljubljana in February, Podgorica in April, Sarajevo in May, Brioni in August, and Skopje in October. RUTA discussions are held after each performance and provide guests with an opportunity to present the artists and aesthetics championed by their theatre. The inaugural edition of the festival took place in Belgrade from 1st to 6th December 2019 and brought together more than 300 participants. RUTA will this December celebrate its fifth anniversary and the 33rd edition of the festival.
Speaking to The Region about this project, Radivojević explains:
“The RUTA Association is today already an established festival, supported by the relevant institutions of every country and declared a ‘Manifestation of Importance to the City of Belgrade’. This festival represents the best example of multiculturalism that has resulted in the realisation of several co-productions that have become part of the festival’s regular repertoire. RUTA aspires to expand beyond the borders of the region with the aim of promoting the artistic values of this part of Europe. Opening up to international partners paves the way to new ideas and theatrical poetics, while exchanges of guest performances provide opportunities for artists to improve their skills and audiences to see higher quality plays. The Belgrade Drama Theatre is otherwise a meeting place for countless artists and audiences from around the world. It has also been most recognisable in recent years for striving to address global issues with partners from abroad, crossbreeding different views of reality. That amalgamation creates exciting theatre.”
The Naši Dani Festival was created in 2021 and is also the brainchild of Radivojević, aimed at institutionalising the idea of cooperation between theatres through exchanges of plays and networking.
Dragomir Zupanc:
The selection of certain films represents a reunion with the classics of Slovenian cinematography and a reminder of the time when Slovene filmmakers participated equally in the championing of Yugoslav cinema
Belgrade’s Yugoslav Film Archives Cinematheque hosted the tenth Days of Slovenian Film event in early May. It paid homage to Ita Rina, a renowned and very engaged actress and model in Europe during the 1920s and ‘30s. A native of the Slovene Littoral, she was also a Belgrade lady of the Vračar neighbourhood. Filmmaker Vladimir Šojat’s film Ita Rina – The Diva From Divača was produced in cooperation with the Yugoslav Film Archives and the Slovenian Cinematheque’s Museum of Slovenian Film Actors. Slovenian Culture Minister Asta Vrečko was an official guest of this event.
Belgrade-born Slovenian film director Dragomir Zupanc deserves the most credit for the inception of this event. Speaking in his capacity as artistic director of the Slovenian Film Days event, he explains why he persevered with his idea.
“I was already heavily engaged in Slovenian Film Festivals, whether as a participant or an observer, when I felt a strong need, as an irredeemable film activist, to present what I’d seen and experienced to a Belgrade audience. Twenty-five years had passed since the country’s split, yet there was still a need to connect and follow happenings in the former republics. The Days of Slovenian Film was officially the first in a series of presentations of cinematography that followed after that fateful November 2015.”
This event quickly conquered other Serbian cities: Niš, Novi Sad, Smederevo, Vršac, Kovin, and Pančevo. Speaking during its jubilee tenth iteration, Slovenian Ambassador to Serbia H.E. Damjan Bergant described it as “the most significant and best-attended Slovenian cultural event in Serbia.”
This event is also important as a precious review of classics of Slovenian film, such as the screening of France Štiglic’s Valley of Peace and Matjaž Klopčić’s Funeral Fest, Burial Lunch. Explaining the inclusion of these classics in the main programme, Zupanc stresses:
“The selection of these films represents a reunion with the classics of Slovenian cinematography and provides a reminder of the time when Slovene filmmakers participated equally in the championing of Yugoslav cinema.”
Andrej Nosov:
We need stronger political will in cultural institutions to turn towards the region, to work together, to exchange, but for there to also be mechanisms for that cooperation
Andrej Nosov is the founder and director of Heartefact, one of the main theatre companies of the region’s independent culture scene. He is renowned for driving discussions of the common recent past in an effort to overcome differences and disputes, which led to Bosnian director Selma Spahić working with Heartefact in directing Hypermnesia, one of the first plays in which people from different countries dance, speak, and remember the former Yugoslavia.
Nosov also directed the memorable play Ghosts, which, apart from Heartefact, included the participation of Sarajevo’s MESS, Belgrade’s Bitef, and Budva’s Theatre City.
Heartefact places particular importance on its collaboration with artists from Kosovo*, which began more than a decade ago. That’s how long the Heartefact Fund has been implementing the Reconnection programme – connecting and exchanging different artists and translating plays and novels, and bringing performers and performances to Belgrade. He works closely with playwright Jeton Neziraj’s Qendra Multimedia theatre company on exchange programmes for playwrights.
As Nosov explains, “for us, regional cooperation is something that’s implied, with a large number of associates living and working in the various countries of the region. It once seemed that this kind of exchange, dialogue, seeing and hearing how we view one another, would become a common practice that we would somehow work together on systematically. Unfortunately, there are only one-off initiatives that depend on the enthusiasm of individuals, with ever reducing and less significant support. The conditions aren’t there to just start collaborating and for that collaboration to be available to everyone and at different levels.
“There are a few regional funds that finance this kind of cooperation, such as the Regional Office for Youth and the Fund for the Western Balkans, but these processes and procedures are complicated for many to navigate and the funds are very limited.
“It will turn out that film, and television production in general, is a good example for that lever. Presumably that’s due to the higher capital, or greater opportunities, because when cooperation does exist it is more visible, and there’s almost no film from the region that hasn’t received mutual regional support.
“We need stronger political will in cultural institutions to turn towards the region, to work together, to exchange. However, we need that to be more than just empty words and for there to also be mechanisms for that cooperation. Truth be told, you can see regional authors on the repertoires of many theatres in Serbia and other countries, but that remains at an incidental level – there is no special commitment to such a priority,” concludes Nosov.
