Bitef

BELGRADE INTERNATIONAL THEATRE FESTIVAL Founded in 1967, BITEF - Belgrade International Theatre Festival survived 33 years as a festival od new world theatre tendencies keeping pace with tumultuous evolution of performing arts, from the revolutionary Sixties to the Seventies, when avant-garde research made its way into repertory theatres to the Eighties, the decade of postmodern theatre expression to the middle of this decade which brings us to tfl6 6rid of ths 20th C6ritury and the end of second millenium, where theatre in general is exploring the limits of human physical abilities, the artistic outlines of which are still hazy. For 33 years, BITEF was one of the rare theatre festivals in the World that simultaneously in its program had avant-garde, experimental and researches forms of performing arts and big main stream productions. The number of the artists who appeared on BITEF as unknown, or hardly recognized, and later became the part of the 20th century history of theatre is impressive, so are their names, like: Jerzy Grotowski, Living Theatre, Alwin Nikolais, Richard Schechner, Luca Ronconi, Bread and Puppet Theatre, Nuria Espert, Otomar Krejča, Peter Zadek, Claus Peymann, Victor Garda, Ingmar Bergman, Roger Planchón, Arianne Mnouchkine, Gerome Savary, Patrice Chérreau, George Lavaudant, Joseph Chaikin, Andrei Serban, William GaskilL, Georgy Tovstonogov, Jury Ljubimov, Anatoly Efros, Antoine Vitez, Tadeusz Kantor, Konrad Swinarski, Jerzi Jarocki, Andrzej Wajda, Jerzy Grzegorzewski, Giorgio Strehler, Carmelo Bene, Lindsay Kemp, Eimuntas Nekrošius, Tamás Ascher, Gabor Zsámbéki, Míelos Jancso, Ljubiša Ristić, Robert Stum a, Igor Vasilev, Erwin Piplits, Frederik Flamand, Karge-Langhof, Hansgiinter Hayme, Alexander Lang, Odin Teatret and Eugenio Barba, La Mamma Theatre, Nuria Espert, Pip Simmons, Charles Ludlam, Shujy Tarajama, Merce Cunningham, Roberto Ciulli, Peter Stein, Peter Brook, Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, La Fura dels Baus, Johan Kresnik, Meredith Monk, Vim Wandekeybus, Henrieta Janowska, Kama Ginkas, Roman Viktjuk, Lev Dodin, Valery Fokin, Silvi u Purcarete, Dušan Jovanović, Joseph Nadj, Dragan Živadinov, Tomai Pandur, Dejan Mijač, Slobodan Unkovski, Nigel Charnock, Christoph Marthaler, Saburo Teshigavara, Comediants, De La Guarda, Angelin Preljocaj, Theatre De Complicité etc. A great number of them was literally discovered by BITEF. Among the first festivals in the world, BITEF put emphases on traditional forms of East theatre, such as Kathakali dance theatre (first première of Ist BITEF 67) or Bejing Opera. For all those years of devoted work on promoting intercultural influences in theatre BITEF antitraditional tradition had been preserved, even in the jast ten years of cultural isolation of Yugoslavia by literary smuggling the art into the country. But even more important is that the spirit of discovering the new theatrical tendencies and -r i . r n*i- r r ?|?arch fields has been preserved, ne concept OT DltGt LílGáLGr was to stay open for all kinds of performing art skills and forms, IO D 6 a center of multimedia projects of all kinds, to explore a new theatrical trends in own productions, to work on international exchange of artists, to organize workshops and wide scale of city actions and happenings. BITEF as mode, Bitef theatre was organized with a small number of employees with unlimited number of disciplines, skills and functions. Since it was conceived Bitef theatre supported different kinds of art concepts and various scale of artists, developing that way a completely new Belgrade scene. This year BITEF has been awarded by PREMIO EUROPA PER IL TEATRO, Taormina arte, SPECIAL PRIZE FOR 1999. Bitef is the first international teatre festival awarded by Premio Europa