14 August 2019 - "Crazy Grass" by Jordan Radickov, directed by Margarita Mladenova continues the drama programme at the City Theatre Festival Budva on Thursday, 15 August.

The play "Crazy Grass" will be performed at 9 pm, at the scene between churches, according to the City Theatre Press. The play is a production of the Sfumato Theatre Laboratory in Sofia.

Tea Schmidihen told the www.kazalište.hr about the Sfumato Theatre and the play "Crazy Grass":

"Jordan Radickov is one of the most popular Bulgarian writers in general, and his works are among the most performed on Bulgarian theater boards. His works often depict the relationship between the village and the city, with special reference to the traditional and the rural, as is the case with the drama Crazy Grass, written in 1980.

Director Margarita Mladenova, on the other hand, is known in Bulgaria for her unique directorial practices and different performances. In addition to Ivan Dobchev, he co-founded the Sfumato Theatre Laboratory, which is known in Sofia as a meeting place for various performance practices and innovative readings.

Crazy grass was created in Sfumato as part of the Noah's ark cycle, whose symbolism is also addressed in drama. In an ironic age of simultaneous hyperlinking and losing contact, this kind of theme attempts to combat collective amnesia, or a kind of barbell in the eyes of society.

 At first glance, Crazy Grass is a bit of a cryptic idea of ​​the disappearance of a Bulgarian village, but Margarita Mladen presents Jordan Radickov's text as a drama about the crisis of Bulgarian (national) identity and tradition in the context of globalization. The emphasis is on folklore and national heritage, which is not only Bulgarian but Slovenian.

Especially striking is the character of an unaccountable old man, a local who has lost his mind wandering on crazy grass. He represents a nation stripped of memory, tradition and meaning, which has gone mad in the pursuit of its identity.

This is a kind of warning of a general loss of authenticity and authenticity due to institutionalized globalization, with particular emphasis placed on militarized groups that leave no room for resistance and other options. Margarita Mladen's Crazy Grass presents viewers with a direction they have never seen, with actors who are also skilled in dance, song, gig and acrobatics, but also an intriguing story that drives one's thinking about identity in today's age of alienation. "

Directed by Margarita Mladenova, stage design by Michael Dobrev and Boris Dalchev, music composed by Hristo Namliev. Cast: Albena Georgieva, Zana Raseva, Galia Kostadinova, Katalin Stareyshinska, Nadja Keranova, Biljana Georgieva, Antonio Dimitrievski, Ivan Nikolov, Dimitri Krumov, Rumen Draganov, Georgi A. Bogdanov.

14 August 2019 - From today, August 14^th, smoking in enclosed public venues will be prohibited in Montenegro with the new Law on Restriction of the Use of Tobacco Products entering into force. The Law strictly prohibits the use of tobacco products indoors, except for casinos. Anyone who violates the provisions of this Law will be fined up to €20.000, said the Health Minister of Montenegro, Kenan Hrapović in an official statement published by the Government of Montenegro.

As TMN previously reported, the new law prohibits smoking in any room or area where food and drinks are served and consumed.

In addition, the law bans the use of tobacco products in any part of enclosed space where state or local authorities and services perform their activities, in areas where educational, healthcare or cultural activities are performed, in the areas of social protection, sport and recreation, trade, production or storage of food, recording or public broadcasting, as well as in the areas where meetings and public gatherings are held. It is possible to designate a specific part of the space that the owner or user designates solely for this purpose. The law clearly stipulates the conditions of insulation, surface, position and equipment of that part of the space: the room must be insulated in such a way that no tobacco smoke can flow into the rest of the space, and the surface must not be less than 10 square meters, must not occupy more than 20 per cent of the workspace or public space and should not be intended for passage to other spaces.

The new law also prohibits the sale of tobacco products that are not labelled with printed warnings covering 65% of the front and rear end of a pack.

Violation of the Law on Restriction of the Use of Tobacco Products will lead to strict penalties going up to 20.000 EUR.

Ministry of Health will be in charge of monitoring the implementation of the law.

An international exhibition entitled "EXODUS. BIRUCHIY 019. MONTENEGRO "will be opened on Friday, August 16, at 8 pm, at the Montenegrin Art Gallery "Miodrag Dado Djuric" in Cetinje. The exhibition, organized by the National Museum of Montenegro, will feature works by artists from Ukraine, Montenegro, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic and Serbia, participants in an international artistic residency who visited Gornji Morinj during June, working on the biblical theme "Exodus".

Ukraine, according to Konstantin Doroshenko, project curator, “suffered imperial aggression and external attempts to restore it to the status of a colonial state and de-modernization forces. And Montenegro was once in the midst of the catastrophe of the Balkan War, where it also faced a desire for freedom, human rights problems, and the development of colonial policies. The post-war Biennial of Contemporary Art in Cetinje created the entire school of new Montenegrin art as an area of ​​international dialogue. That’s why independent Montenegro has become a place of the new international art project “Exodus. Biruchiy 019. Montenegro”.

Project participants are: Apl Aplov (Odessa), Sergej Bratkov (Kharkov-Moscow), Volodimir Budnikov (Kiev), Milka Delibasic (Niksic), Vitalij Kravets (Kiev), Nikita Kravtsov (Paris), Matvej Krilov (Herceg Novi), Roman Mikhailov (Kharkov), Mladen Miljanovic (Banja Luka), Pavla Nikitina (Brno), Jiri Pec (Brno), Karina Pustovalova (Kiev), Vlada Ralko (Kiev), Sinisa Radulovic (Podgorica), Kamilla Sanjez (Paris), Selma Selman (Bihac-New York), Zoran Todorovic (Belgrade), Jelena Tomasevic (Podgorica) and Vlatka Vujosevic (Podgorica).

The curator of this project is Konstantin Doroshenko - Ukrainian art critic and journalist, curator of art exhibitions and cultural projects in Ukraine, USA, China and Kyrgyzstan. The commissioner is Petar Cukovic, Montenegrin professor of art history, one of the commissioners of the Biennale Cetinje, director of the National Museum of Montenegro (1995-2007), curator of the National Pavilion of Montenegro at the Venice Biennale (2001 and 2011) and exhibitions in Austria, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Italy. The international exhibition at the National Museum of Montenegro will last until September 7 and will be held with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation - a government institution that promotes the development of national culture, the Exodus Social Club and the International Symposium of Contemporary Art BIRUCHIY - the largest artistic residency in Ukraine.

Text by CdM, on August 13th, 2019, read more at CdM

Comic cartoonist, illustrator, designer, musician ... Leonid Pilipovic is currently working for the French publishing house Delcourt on the new title "Le Dernier Dragon" (J.P. Pecau). For Delcourt, he has drawn two episodes (4th and 5th) for the series “L’ Histoire Secrete” by screenwriter Jean Pierre Pecaua. He completed a series called "Le Grande Jeu" by the same screenwriter (6 episodes) and one episode of "Jour J" (J. P. Pecau and Fred Duval). At the same time, for the second French house Soleil he completed the series "Ravermoon" by screenwriter Sylvian Cordurie (3 episodes). His comics have been licensed in the US, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy and Croatia.

He became involved in comics in elementary and high school under the strong influence of the then Zagreb comic book scene called "Novi kvadrat", composed by Kordej, Ilić, Zimonjić. The first serious comic book published in magazine Mladost in 1988 and then published in comic books such as Patak, Tron, Striper, Patagonia, Stripoteka…

He participated in international comics projects with anti-war themes: "The Dignity of a Human Being is Vulnerable", "Signed by War", and "Sperminator", wall comic magazine "AUT!" # 3 (AWA, 1996) with Edmond Spierts, Peter Pontiac, Marcel Ruiters (The Netherlands), Aleksandar Zograf and Wostok (Serbia)… He published short strip forms for certain period in “Dani” of Subotica.

Together with Darko Kovacevic- (Kowalsky), he is the author of the cult comic strip “What’s New In Da Zoo?” , which has been published for almost two years in the weekly cultural guide, popular “Flash” in Subotica (where he was a graphic editor). Since 2004, he has been a professional comic artist. He has done illustrations for numerous magazines and books, as well as covers for albums by “Partibrejkersi”, “Goblini”, “Elektricni Orgazam”, as well as design and logos for a huge number of cult organizations and festivals, including “Amsterjam” - Amsterdam Jazz Festival

Štef ​​Bartolić was born in 1967 in Zagreb, where in 1986 he graduated from the School of Applied Arts, Department of Graphic Arts. He is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Workers and the Croatian Community of Independent Artists.

He has been involved in animation professionally since 1988. As an animator, he worked on the feature films "The Wizard's Hat" and "The Apprentice Hlapic" (Croatia film), as well as "The Little Flying Bears" (Zagreb film). As part of the project “1991”, he directed and animated four one-minute films, "Cockroaches", "Free Croatia", "Feather" and "Don't Get Angry Man" (Zagreb film).

He directed and animated a number of short animated films, opening themes for the children's program on HTV and in 1994 he was the author the opening theme for the World Animated Film Festival in Zagreb.

He has illustrated twenty novels for children and young people (“Peter Pan” JM Barrie, The “Train in the Snow” by Mate Lovrak, Ivana Brlic-Mazuranic's “Apprentice Hlapic”, “Books lie! “ and “The Yellow Minute” by Darko Macan,  “Head over heels” by Miro Gavran, and several books by Hrvoje Kovacevic, Silvija Sesto , Sanja Polak…). In 1996 he won awards for illustration at the Vinkovci Comic Salon, and in 2003 the SFERE Award.

He has been in the comics business since 1986. He has been published in Polet, “Student Magazine”, “Maxi Comic Magazine”, “Patak”, “Plavi zabavnik”, “Vecernji List”, “Playboy”, and in children's magazines in which he has published series of comic books for children for many years. The series "Komarac" (screenplay by Darko Macan) has been published in "Zvrk" magazine for nine years, and in “Modra lasta” the comic "Gluhe Laste" has been continuously published for fourteen years.

He has co-authored two comic albums with Darko Macan, "Mosquito: Failed Plan" and "Dick Long: The Cases."

Bartolić and Pilipović thus complete the list of special guests, three weeks before the commencement of the celebration in Herceg Novi dedicated to the Ninth Art, with Argentine, the legend of comic book creator Enrique Breccia; British duo of great artists Boo Cook and Simon Davis; Italians Vanessa Belardo, Pasquale del Vecchio, Andrea di Vito and Mario Alberti, and Spaniards Raul Allen and Javier Fernandez, as well as Belgian Alain Mauriset. They will lead an impressive artistic army of more than 50 creators, who will be staying in Herceg Novi in ​​September, and now include practically resident artists - William Simpson, Rufus Dayglo, Walter Venturi, Walter Trono, Drazen Kovacevic, Mirko Colak, Aleksa Gajic , Stevan Subic, as well as those who, since the first festival, have been at Herceg Novi comic book review and are considered an inseparable part of the HSF, Tihomir Tikulin, Vladimir Vesovic, Iztok Sitar.

Reminding us that 2019 is full of significant anniversaries from the comics world, this year's edition of the HSF will mark these crucial historic moments as 90 years since the release of Tin Tin, 80 years of Batman, 60 years of Asterix, 50 years of Alan Ford and 50 years of the most famous Balkan comic Dikan. In this context, lectures will be given by the legend of the comic strip creator, author of Dikan, Lazar Sredanovic, the great Montenegrin comic book theorist Luka Rakojevic, and famous comic book connoisseurs Moreno Buratini, Iztok Sitar, Vladimir Vesovic, Milko Peko, Zoran Stefanovic, Enis Cisic and many others. The lectures that will be held in the schools in Herceg Novi and established HSF locations, in addition to exhibitions, drawing for the fans, art workshops, concerts and posh HSF parties, are part of a full-day program that fills all six days of the celebration in Herceg Novi dedicated to the Ninth Art and all events are free of charge for all visitors.

Of course, HSF would not be one of the leading festivals in this part of Europe if it does not prepare every year some kind of top-notch surprise, so something is ready for this edition of HSF as well, and a list of top music makers, who will be part of the 13th edition of Herceg Novi manifestation dedicated to the ninth art will be announced shortly.

Text by CdM, on August 13th 2019, read more at CdM

On August 16 and 17, Kotor’s Cinema Square (Pjaci od kina) will host the second traditional craft beer festival “Špina”. The event will begin at 7 pm, running until 1 am.

Seven breweries will be participating, six from Montenegro and one from Serbia. This edition will welcome Fabrika Brewery from Risan, Mamut from Nikšić, Montenegro Brewing Company from Podgorica, Podgorica Pivo and Paun, both also from Podgorica, Beerhouse from Budva and Dogma from Serbia.

As the first Kotor craft beer festival was a great success and surpassed all expectations, Non-Governmental Organisation Citra had the challenge of being even better with the second edition. This year’s festival will be held over two evenings, with good music assured. The organisers guarantee good local beers and great fun.

On the first evening, 16th August, there will be performances from Selektor Deda and Rudolf band from Kolašin, and on 17th FM Mirda and Four Blues Drivers band will take to the stage. All lovers of good music and good beer are welcome.

Organisers are NGO Citra Kotor, with Kotor Tourist Organisation sponsoring. Lustica Bay is a Gold Sponsor, with other sponsorship from the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism, Vapor Printers Podgorica and Kotor Public Utility Company. Nikola Đurković Cultural Centre is noted as a friend of the festival.

Porto Montenegro and Belgrade-based M2C event management agency present the underwater exhibition by Montenegrin artist Luka Radojević. The exhibition has been set in the Tivat aquatorium, just off the island of Our Lady of Mercy. It has been realized due to cooperation between Porto Montenegro Company and M2C.

The concept of the sculptures for the underwater exhibition deals with time, as an abstract phenomenon in civilizational change.

The exhibition is dedicated to ancient sculpture, which is dominated by male and female torso inspired by ancient Greece and Rome. They also have implemented abstract elements reminiscent of the civilization of ancient Egypt in their geometric form and colour, as has been announced from Porto Montenegro.

“The ancient Greeks and later Rome paid great attention to the creation of portraits, male and female torso, and the idealization of the human body, and in fact, through modelling, brought it three-dimensionally closer to divine ideal proportions.

The best examples of ancient Greek sculpture have been preserved precisely thanks to the sea, as they were found at archeological sites at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea on ships that sank in ancient times, thus preserving important sculptures from that time. The bottom of the sea has kept the mystical secret of masterpieces for thousands of years. It is with the display of sculptures at the bottom of the sea that I, as an artist, wish to revive the mystical ancient times and to see our future through a vision of the past”, emphasizes artist Luka Radojević.

The exhibition will be staged until August 18th and can be enjoyed by all who come with diving equipment to Our Lady of Grace. Over 200 guests of Porto Montenegro and Regent Hotel, as well as the players of recently organized polo tournament in Tivat nautical resort, and many others, have been delighted with this extraordinary setting, it has been pointed out from Porto Montenegro.

Art in Croatia and its cultural connection with Montenegro, especially with the area of ​​Boka Kotorska and Tivat will be the subject of the next exhibition in Summerhouse Buća in Tivat.

Tivat Museum and Gallery continues its art program, worthy of the attention of the professional and wider public, which began last year with the exhibition "Towards Nature", it has been announced from this house of art.

It encourages the maintenance of a cultural manifestation that aims to educate the general public about modern art in Croatia, as well as its relations with Boka Kotorska.

A special opportunity for this in the newly renovated and decorated Tivat Gallery, situated in the Summerhouse Buća will be provided from 16 August to 6 September at the exhibition "The Art Correlations of Tivat and Zagreb".

The works of three renowned visual artists will be presented then, which through extremely mature and very current approaches to painting expression confirm individual relationships to the world in which we live. The artwork of Zagreb painters Lea Popinac (1981) and Pavle Pavlovic (1983), as well as Momcilo Macanovic (1966) from Tivat, will be presented to the audience.

All three artists work in oil painting technique, which they use in different ways, expressing figuratively (Macanovic and Pavlovic) in the pursuit of realistic or objectless. (Popinjac).

It is worth pointing out that the visitors will be able to get an immediate glimpse not only individually into their works, but also with a collective insight investigating whether they complement (and how) their expressions when they are put together (as is the case in this collective exhibition).

The exhibition, organized by the Museum and Gallery Tivat, will open on Friday, August 16 at 9 pm. Jelena Bujišić, director and curator of the gallery, in professional cooperation with curator Nevenka Sarcevic from Zagreb will participate in the event. This art event and the stay of two painters in Boka Kotorska is supported by the Municipality of Tivat and Vice President Ilija Janovic.

We want the Tivat audience to recognize the interest and value of these cultural events for both the art scene and the city of Tivat itself, it is concluded in the announcement by Museum and Gallery Tivat.

On August 9, at St. Spirit church, leading international artists Yuja Wang and Andreas Ottensamer held their second concert within the XVIII KotorArt Don Branko Music Days. With their carefully selected program, they evoked a wide variety of emotions in the audience, playing compositions of different epochs and composers. What was familiar and evident in their playing was the perfection of the performance, the symbiosis of the sound and the presence at the given moment.

Performing multiple times in an encore accompanied by a 20-minute standing ovation from the audience justified the superlatives used along with their name. Recognized for her unique blend of technical bravura of musical deliberation and emotional depth, the pianist, Yuja Wang, has performed several compositions during and after the program. With each performance, the reactions were louder, the enthusiasm did not wane, both from the audience and the artist. As a result, an agreement was reached on performances in Montenegro next year. The concert was attended by Ambassador of China to Montenegro, Liu Jin, Mayor of the capital, Ivan Vukovic, and President of one of China's largest concert agencies, Jianguo Zheng.

The last week of the Festival and this peak of artistic music, featuring Narek Hahnazarjan, Roman Simovic, Blythe Tech-Engstrem, Simon Crawford Phillips, Milena Simovic, as well as Yuja Wang and Andreas Ottensamer, were also covered by regional media who were staying in Kotor. Journalists from Serbia and Croatia are delighted with the program, the organizing team and Kotor, which over time has become for Montenegro what Dubrovnik Summer Games are for Croatia. 

Text by CdM, on Agust 10th 2019, read more at CdM

Last night, with the program "Piazza of Jazz" and the last performance within the series of jazz concerts, completed the entire program of the international KotorArt festival. Over 46 festival days of this year's edition, more than 1500 artists from 25 countries participated and performed more than 300 programs - 53 major and over 250 supporting ones.

The festival is sponsored by the Municipality of Kotor and the Ministry of Culture of Montenegro, as well as with the support of important friends and sponsors - Coca-Cola, Lustica Bay, Porto Montenegro, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary, the Hungarian Embassy in Montenegro, the Tourist Organization of Kotor, Huma, Junus Emre Institute, Accion cultural Espanola and many other partners. In this way, the festival provides almost 40% of the total budget through sponsorships, donations, and its own funds. Media partners of the festival are RTCG and Pobjeda, and media friends are all major media in Montenegro.

KotorArt is grateful to patrons, artists, audiences, all sponsors, friends as well as media partners for their outstanding cooperation and broadcast of all program activities.

Participants in this year's edition of the festival came from Montenegro, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary, USA, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Luxembourg, Armenia, Turkey, Israel, China and Russia.

This year's edition of the festival took place from June 27 to August 11 at numerous locations in Kotor and across Boka Bay through four program units: XVIII KotorArt Festival Klapa Perast, XXVII KotorArt Kotor Festival of Children's Theater, XVIII KotorArt Don Branko Music Days and IX KotorArt Philosopher's square.

XVIII KotorArt Klapa Perast Festival hosted female, male and mixed klapa groups from Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina who competed in different categories. The jury was composed of Mojmir Cacija - president, Zlata Marjanovic, Mario Katavic, Zorana Larkovic, Marina Dulovic, Jasminko Setka and Vladimir Begovic.

In the category of best female klapa, according to the expert jury, the winners were the Lusa klapa from Split. In the category of best male group, the winners were the group Conra, also from Split. The New Klapa Song Award went to author Marko Šimić for his song “Love” by Lusa, performed by the Klapa Lusa from Split. Also, as part of the Hungarian Culture Week event, the concert was also held by a Capella band Fool Moon from Hungary.

XXVII KotorArt Festival for Children's Theater was held under the slogan "Trip to the Moon". From 01 to 12 July, Kotor was a city of children, and the children had the opportunity to attend performances from many countries, workshops and panels. This year, the 27th in a row, the Kotor Festival of Children's Theater marked as many as 24 plays within the theater program. During the 12 festival days, 16 performances were performed in this part of the program, of which there were 12 premieres and 4 shows. A total of 109 programs were realized at the Festival.

IX KotorArt Philosopher's Square was held on August 10 and 11, entitled "How to Think of Refuge". The editor of this year's Piazza was Paula Petricevic, a philosopher, activist, feminist, Master of Political Science. Carna Brkovic's lectures were presented on this topic through the thesis "Humanitarianism as a Politics of Citizenship" and a lecture by Adriana Zaharijevic with the topic "We refugees: A life that cannot be lived".

XVIII KotorArt Don Branko's days of music marked the 40th anniversary of the devastating earthquake in 1979, as well as placing on the UNESCO list of the world's heritage through orders and performing new works. The concerts are divided into several series: Top Art Music, where this year we could once again hear the very top of the world stage, such as Yuja Wang, Andreas Ottensamer, Narek Hahnazarjan, Blythe Teh-Engstrem, Roman Simovic and many others; then the Coca-Coca Stage, where music and popular music intertwined with concerts dedicated to Oliver Dragojevic, but also those of Massimo Savic and Sergej Cetkovic with the orchestra of young talents; Jazz Market, a series of 5 Sunday jazz concerts at the Museum of Kotor Market in Kotor; KotorArt Talents, a platform for young, successful artists strongly supported by the Festival; as well as the Port of Art, perhaps the favorite series of Kotor caterers, passers-by and tourists, performances by various ensembles in the squares in the Old Town. 

In addition to the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, we also listened to two Festival Orchestra concerts, the RTS Grand Jazz Orchestra, the No Borders Orchestra and many other bands. KotorArt was also an important partner in the implementation of the Hungarian Culture Week program in Montenegro and hosted the directors of major festivals from Verbier and Shanghai. According to preliminary estimates, the Festival's main and supporting programs were attended by more than 40 thousand visitors.

Photo credit: Duško Miljanić, Krsto Vulović

Text by CdM, on August 13th, 2019, read more at CdM