After four years as director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Warsaw, I arrived in Belgrade in January of this year. I immediately found myself very well, feeling, as I expected, familiarity and proximity to Italy in many aspects of Belgrade’s daily life.
Since the early days spent in this city, I have been trying to walk every street of Belgrade to find the hidden spots and properly catch glimpses of a history full of artistic reminiscences. For me, it is crucial to have constant contact with the city to get closer to it and feel part of its existence.
It really wasn’t difficult for me to integrate into the office of the Institute here in Belgrade. The staff – recently reinforced with the arrival of my colleague Francesca Calamaro – is very competent and sharing my enthusiasm for our linguistic and cultural promotion.
Because of the current situation, many events and activities took place online, such as our Italian language courses, meetings with writers and intellectuals, seminars, special events such as the Day of Remembrance, the Day of Italian Design, some concerts, and the publication of videos on our Youtube channel. We have been able to intercept users who are not residents in Belgrade and are equally passionate about Italy, eager to follow our cultural offer. I am thinking, for example, of the Serbian version of the audiobook dedicated to the Divine Comedy, created in 33 different languages around the world.
I have met the managers of numerous Serbian cultural institutions, and established cordial and friendly relationships, distinguished by a collaborative spirit and a great willingness to organize high-level cultural events together. Puccini Festival Foundation will set “Madam Butterfly” at the National Theater, and Italy will participate in numerous festivals and cultural events such as the Belgrade Jazz Festival, Belgrade Dance Festival, Budi Festival, Jazz Festival, Vizualizator Festival of photography, etc.
I am very happy to be in Belgrade, and I will give my best to interact and cooperate with local and international cultural institutions
We have conceived and are carrying out editorial and academic projects with the departments of Italian language from the universities of Belgrade, Novi Sad and Kragujevac, with the Faculty of Architecture and that of Applied Art. We have collaborated in classical music festivals throughout Serbia, such as the Art Link Festival, and collaborating with institutions of the level of the Kolarac Foundation, while we have hosted personal and collective exhibitions of painters and photographers in the Institute as part of two exceptional centenaries: the seven hundred years since the birth of Dante Alighieri and the hundred years since the birth of Leonardo Sciascia. We also supported theatrical performances dedicated to fashion, cooking, design, literature, in close synergy with the Italian Embassy, first of all, and then with the Italian Trade Agency, with the Italo-Serbian Chamber of commerce and of course with Confindustria Serbia, with whom we plan to organize numerous cultural events.
Next year will open in January with an important festival of contemporary Italian cinema: CinemaItaliaOggi Balcani, created in collaboration with Cinecittà Istituto Luce and Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, during which nine very recent Italian films will be shown and screened not only in the capital city but also in Novi Sad, Kragujevac and Niš. We are also working on editorial projects such as the Serbian edition of Carla Fracci’s autobiography, in collaboration with the Belgrade Dance Festival, or the participation of the Institute at the Belgrade Book Fair. We will also dedicate several literary, photographic and cinematographic events to Pier Paolo Pasolini as part of the centenary of his birth. We will intensify Italian participation in the most significant possible number of periodic cultural events in Serbia. Without neglecting the collaboration and support for teachers and students of Italian at all learning levels.
We are planning important cultural events in Novi Sad with the city institutions, an important art exhibition at the Civic Museum with very prestigious loans from the famous Galleria Borghese in Rome. We will set up an opera and organize concerts and shows theatrical.
Please consult our website constantly: we look forward to seeing you at our events.