Svetozar Cvetković: We will make a decision about Bitef that we will not be ashamed of

Three weeks ago it looked like it would This year's Bitef still be held despite all the obstacles that the City Assembly puts in front of it, and then today, April 23, a letter was published Nikita Milivojevića To the BITEF Board  and - as if everything is being questioned again.

Namely, on April 5, the Board of Bitef refused to decide on the program of this year's edition of the festival as recommended by the Secretariat for Culture, and said that it would be ready to hire Nikita Milivojević, the current artistic director of Bitef, and a team of associates of his choice.

It was a logical and only benevolent proposal, given that Nikita Milivojević already has five contracted foreign performances for the next Bitef, that is, it would be impossible for the new artistic director to choose and contract a new program from May to September.

The city assembly did not respond

However, the City Assembly did not respond to such a proposal by the Board, and allowed to find out about a new candidate for Bitef's artistic director, who will immediately prepare the entire program.

And Nikita Milivojević, on his own behalf and on behalf of the team he worked with (Ksenija Đurović and Tijana Grumić), sent a letter to the Board today thanking them for their trust and support, but still had to decline the offer.

Thus, the question of the survival of Bitef was brought back to the beginning.

The board will have a solution.

The Bitef board will discuss everything, and possibly decide, on Friday.

"We will agree on what the solution is, we will find a way that will lead to a solution that we will not be ashamed of," Svetozar Cvetković, president of the Bitef Board, told the "Vremena" portal.

"The Board's mandate is to choose an artistic director, and we are obliged to do that," says Cvetković.

"We will not agree to have such a decision imposed on us. We will decide on our own, in accordance with the new rules on the city's cultural manifestations that have been announced. We will do what is best for Bitef," said Svetozar Cvetković.

Milivojević is looking for uninterrupted work

Thanking for the trust, Nikita Milivojević says in the mentioned letter that he and his team are "convinced that this year's Bitef is a step backwards in the current circumstances, and not what we would like it to be, and what it should and deserves to be".

Photo: Promo/ Jakov Simović

According to Milivojević, there are three conditions that he considers "essential for the normal work of any artistic director": the artistic director's mandate lasting four years, the continuation of work with the same team with which he collaborated at the previous two festivals, and complete freedom, i.e. unhindered and uncensored work.

"Unfortunately, something that should be taken for granted works quite differently in practice. In short, the artistic director's mandate for four years is not my personal ambition, but a return to something that had already been established years before, until the recent decision of the City Assembly (adopted in 2016) reduced the mandate to two years, which proved to be extremely harmful to the continuity of the festival," Milivojević explained and added;

"We faced pressures, attempts at censorship, as well as challenging the choice of my collaborators. However, what I think is much more important at this moment is something completely different. As an artistic team, my collaborators and I have continued to work on the preparation of the next edition since the end of the previous festival, without any guarantees or contracts, solely believing in the importance of continuity and the value of Bitef."

Failed international treaties

He also explained that due to the protracted decisions of the founders, a significant number of international agreements failed, because "renowned bands and artists cannot afford to wait in uncertainty."

"How, then, can we expect a serious result in such a context? How is it even possible to continue the "normal" work of organizing this year's festival in a situation where, instead of a ready-made entire repertoire, at this moment we have potentially only one performance." I don't want to cast doubt on the good intention of the board to "save" this year's edition of Bitef ("Bitef is bigger, more important than all of us..."), but to, first of all, point out how this kind of "rescue" is, in fact, a further collapse of the festival. Organizing a festival without timely preparation, without a stable budget, which, let's remember, this year was additionally reduced by 10 million dinars, and without minimum professional working conditions, essentially damages the long-term reputation and future of Bitef as one of the most important cultural events in the region."

Legal confusion

He says that "the appearance of stability and continuity is being created, while in reality it is a festival without solid institutional foundations at the moment," and that "all this is just an additional, completely unnecessary waste of precious time." "I repeat, we do not doubt the good intentions of the Board, but unfortunately, much in the current situation seems to be undefined, confusing and unclear."

"In the end, since it is persistently said that the intention is to change the rulebook on manifestations, it is still not clear (and all this time we have not been given any argument on that matter) why the city of Belgrade intends to abolish the function of artistic director of permanent city manifestations, including Bitef. All this together has additionally created legal confusion that has been going on for so long that it has seriously called into question the possibility of holding the festival itself," concluded Nikita Milivojević.

Sessions of the City Assembly are held once a month. The decision on the new rules for Belgrade's cultural events is procedural, it is not voted on, it is only announced.