In this year’s cultural happening Belgrade Summer Festival - BELEF 2012, held in Belgrade from May 25 to August 15, more than 300 artists will take part. During BELEF 30 concerts will be held, along with three film festivals, weight thematic exhibitions and various other programs. The report of Tihana Pavicevic.
As pointed during the press conference by Deputy City Secretary for Culture Aleksandar Petrovic, BELEF 2012 has gone through program changes and thus became “the festival of festivals, a cultural event that has unified whole culture and art”. The organizers say that in its new form BELEF will host this year some 20 stand-up comedians from the region, but also most prestigious British authors. Over the course of the event, 14 thematic festivals will be realized, organized in 48 program units. Director of the Belgrade Summer Festival Vuk Despotovic has stated that “this year the citizens and visitors of Belgrade will receive the gift of two and a half months of cultural and art programs, mostly realized outdoors”. He explains that BELEF 2012 will unite all the best that the Belgrade festival scene has to offer, so it represents a pioneering endeavor in organizing a festival, and according to the reputation it has in the world, it reminds of the famous Edinburgh festival.
The visitors will be able to enjoy the diverse cultural contents for free, and it represents the chance to get in sync with current cultural trends, in the wider sense of that word, because at issue is an international event. BELEF 2012 will be opened by the international exhibition entitles “Open range”. The project is conceived so that 19 invited artists from Serbia will realize their works in the Geozavod building, and through those “interventions in space” change the visibility of the building. The focus of those works will not be on the materialistic values, but the intention to breathe life into “invisible spaces”. This exhibition will last from May 25 to June 25. The organizers of BLEF 2012 have also promised a rich music program, which will unfold within festivals RingRing and Resonate, in the Belgrade fortress.
According to Vuk Despotovic, a great number of festival features have come up as the result of excellent cooperation with renowned Belgrade festivals. The exhibitions will be gathered under the umbrella of the “Visual program” and the film program will be traditionally realized under the title “Magnificent Seven”. The “Crocodile” festival represents the literary features, while the ecological component will be expressed in the form of “SuperNatural” festival.