Today (June 26) the 59th program was finally announced. Bitefa, although it should have been presented back on press conference on June 23, that is, later that day or the next day - as Spasoje Ž promised on that occasion. Milovanović, president of the Bitef Board and this year's selector.
As then, and now, no reason has been given for this delay either.
Journalists have now received the program of the 59th Bitef, the Selector's Speech, and the text of the performances by email. In this last document, there are only descriptions of the plays, without information about the theaters/troupes that performed them.
Direct communication with the media was avoided, and therefore the possibility of asking coach Miladinović questions about his selection.
Montenegrins are at the opening.
This year's edition of Bitef, the 59th in a row, will be held from September 14 to 20 under the slogan "Dare to find out". The Belgrade audience will have the opportunity to watch seven plays from Argentina/Spain, Montenegro, Italy, Lebanon, Portugal, Slovenia, and Serbia.
Bitef opens with a performance The subject of Medea directed by Diego de Brea, a co-production of the Montenegrin National Theater from Podgorica and the Bar Cultural Center.
Photo: Promo/Christophe Raynaud De LageFrom the play "When I saw the sea"
The main program will include a performance When I saw the sea by the Lebanese author and director Ali Charour, which was created in the immediate context of the bombing of Lebanon in 2024. It arrives from Slovenia Ankh's, based on the text by Žiga Divjak and Katarina Morano, directed by Žiga Divjak and produced by the Slovenian National Theater in Nova Gorica. The documentary starts from the history of the place of the same name in the Soča Valley, exploring the way certain decisions continue to produce consequences long after they have been made.
A performance Audition returns the Portuguese collective Teatro Praga to the space from which, almost two decades ago, it was forced to leave, and their performance starts from that gap between the memory of the place and the place as it is today.
Diptych Frankenstein (Love Story + History of Hate) the Italian troupe Motus, whose authors are Daniela Niccolo and Enrico Casagrande. Mary Shelley's cult novel inspired the creation of two plays that function as a whole and explore the mechanisms through which a community establishes its own boundaries.
Representative of Serbia
The domestic production is presented in the main program Crno zlato Dejan Dukovsky, directed by Oliver Frljić and produced by the Belgrade Drama Theater, which through a story in which family ties, old conflicts, debts and repressed memories are gradually revealed, builds a world in which nothing is completely stable: identities, family roles, social positions and mutual relationships constantly change meaning.
The selection is rounded off by a performance Kill me. by Argentinian author Marina Otero, the third part of her long-term project Remember to live.. In all three plays, Otero starts from autobiographical material and his own psychiatric diagnosis, opening up the question of the relationship between life, performance and their stage construction.
Spasoje Z. Milovanović decided on the aforementioned seven performances after watching 87 performances.
Judging by the material provided to journalists, there is not a single dance performance among them.
Spasoje Z. Milovanović called this year's selection "Dare to know".
Dare to know the truth.
At the beginning of the explanation, he explained that "the title of this year's Bitef was not the starting point of the choice, but its result. It appeared only when the plays began to be read together. The seven plays created in different production circumstances and artistic traditions are not connected by a common aesthetic determination, nor a political attitude or content. Their differences are not hidden or subordinated to a pre-established concept - on the contrary, it is precisely from them that the possibility of encounter and dialogue emerges."
Then he says that "in almost all plays, the conflict does not arise between enemies, but between those who share the same space, the same family, the same origin or the same experience", and that is why "the issue of responsibility comes to the fore - not only for what was done, but also for what was kept silent, for what could have been prevented, for what was inherited, for decisions whose consequences outlive their makers. Their heroes possess only part of the truth, their actions produce consequences that they cannot fully foresee. Responsibility therefore proves to be more complex than simple apportionment of blame".
Milovanović states that "in Serbia, the last few years have been marked by a sharp increase in distrust towards institutions", as well as that "different parts of the same society often describe the same reality as if they live in different countries, speak different languages and share different memories. As if it is enough to know who said something, which party he belongs to or who he supports, in order to know if it is true".
Therefore, concludes Spasoje Ž. Milovanović "the performances of this year's selection do not start from a foregone conclusion, nor do they seek to reduce the complexity of experience to a predetermined judgement. They are interested in what precedes the verdict: circumstances, relationships, consequences, perspectives and processes through which certain events become understandable. They are not outside of those events, but in the midst of them, in front of an audience from which an answer is still expected today. They do not defend time from criticism, do not release individuals or communities from responsibility, but they refuse to come to a conclusion before knowledge and without their own opinion".
There are two and a half months until the start of Bitef, there will be enough time to say a few more words about the selected performances and everything else about the 59th Bitef.
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