The Festival of International Student Theatre - FIST 05

Bobu bob, popu pop! (To everyone according to merits)

Education, as we know it today, is acquired with great facility and speed. Such a fact has brought about the appearance of "cheap knowledge" and "media pollution". A new social class has been created, which has the characteristics of broad masses but the quality and the authority of the elite. This hybrid creation which encompasses the negative qualities of the mass and the elite, can be defined as pop elitism


By WAVE Team
from Belgrade, SERBIA
Translation: JELENA TUCOVIĆ


From November 13-15, the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade (FDU) will host the 5th annual Festival of International Student Theatre - FIST 05. The Festival has been started, and, year after year, it is created and organized by the students of FDU at the Department for Management and Production in Theatre, Radio and Culture.

As every year, this year's FIST 05 also has a social problem at its focus. The main theme and the key concept of this year's festival is the issue of "pop elitism" as defined by the FIST team.

Education, as we know it today, is acquired with great facility and speed. Such a fact has brought about the appearance of "cheap knowledge" and "media pollution". A new social class has been created, which has the characteristics of broad masses but the quality and the authority of the elite. This hybrid creation which encompasses the negative qualities of the mass and the elite, can be defined as pop elitism. Its appearance is most evident in the areas of humanistic sciences, art and culture, where it is more difficult to determine the effects of human actions than in exact sciences. Pop elitism is based on a distorted image of one's own quality, singularity, supremacy. The elite's attributes, superficially attained, or the illusion of their availability, stimulate the individual's positive image of self-worth deprived of any inner value. In an attempt to defend his status, the insecure individual looks for a group of like-minded people in which he would be able to sustain and feed the illusion of his own elitism, thus stimulating the multiplication of personalities and ideas, claim the organizers of FIST.

They point out that with overproduction we are faced with the multitude of choices, which are nothing more than a serial line of barely masked copies. Today, everyone can make a film, put on a show or a performance. When the criteria which determine value are not clearly defined, the freedom can be more of a hindrance than help to cultural growth. The crux of the problem is in cultural and culturally-educational institutions which support and clone the average man. The reduction of criteria means a larger number of learned people, whose knowledge is elite only on paper. Misinterpreted and reduced to a series of emblems, the elite has become a stereotype sustained by the collection of material signs of status. In the majority of cases, pop elitists have an outside source of self-preservation in the form of an institution or an ideological authority. The imitation of such an authority leads to inactivity and hidebound views which make prejudices and thought inertia more deeply rooted.



Through its program, FIST aims to ask questions: How to stop pop elitism from spreading? What would the breaking of closed, stale groups accomplish? How to beat superficiality? What consequences do the attitudes and actions of pop-elitist circles have? Does value exist? Do we need criteria? What would they be?

The main program of FIST 05 includes the competition between four plays - "Almost owl" by the Janacek Academy of Music and Performing Arts (DIFA JAMU) from Brno, the Czech Republic; "A look back" by the Department of Puppet Theatre at the Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU) from Prague; "The Collection" by the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts "Krustyo Sarafov" (NATFIZ) from Sofia, Bulgaria; and "Doreen Watson" by the National Theatre Academy from Copenhagen, Denmark - which will give a chance to the audience to see the works of the most renown European theatrical academies. Also, outside the main program, the plays that will be performed are "Jonathan" by the Academy of Visual Arts from Jerusalem, Israel; and "Winter flowers" which is a co-production between the Festival of International Student Theatre and the afore-mentioned academy from Israel, which won the grand-prix FIST 04 with its play "The human nature".

Other than the main program, FIST 05 will also feature the educational program comprising of five workshops - "The elementary principles of acting", a workshop designed for actors and directors with the lectures by Tomi Janezic; "The illusion of elitism" designed for visual artists with the lectures by Mareta Bulca from Slovenia; "Management in arts", a workshop designed for fine artists with the lectures by Jelena Glisic; "A portrait at FIST and within it", a workshop on photography with the lectures by Djordje Odanovic; and, especially mentioned by the organizer, "From manipulation to animation" a workshop on the puppet theatre which will feature lectures by the professor from the most prestigious academy of puppet theatre in Bulgaria, Slavcho Malenov.

This year, FIST 05 will also offer two stands, one of them directly dealing with the festival's main theme, pop elitism, and participation from the experts in the areas of art, sociology and culture theory.

Alongside accompanying exhibits, the audience will have the chance to see a number of interesting and creative projects as part of festival's off program, where a mutual project with a group from Novi Sad, Fun and Magic Accidents (FAMA), stands out. You can also listen to FIST radio on the Internet, via the official festival's website.


(Published: 11.11.2009.)