Monday, 2 September 2019

Baltic House Festival Theatre to Open St. Petersburg Theatre Festival in Zagreb

ZAGREB, September 2, 2019 - A theatrical production by the Baltic House Festival Theatre based Nikolai Gogol's "Taras Bulba" will open the 13th St. Petersburg International Theatre Season Festival in the Croatian National Theatre (HNK) on September 13 and will run until September 17, bringing four productions.

Promoting the festival, HNK underscored that the productions will be directed by leading St. Petersburg directors.

The festival presents contemporary art produced in the "northern capital" of Russia and is aimed at motivating an exchange of creativity and strengthening cultural-artistic ties.

An exhibition of photographs by Pavel Franchishin will be presented for the duration of the festival, showing 20 urban landscape works.

The St. Petersburg International Theatre Season Festival was established in 2007 with the aim of strengthening and developing relations between St. Petersburg and theatre centres in various European countries by exchanging ideas and organising important cultural events.

The Festival has since been presented in Prague, Helsinki, Milan, Marseilles, Belgrade, Tallinn and other cities.

More theatre news can be found in the Lifestyle section.

Wednesday, 21 August 2019

Reconstructed Cultural Centre in Korođ Opens

ZAGREB, August 21, 2019 - The refurbished Cultural Centre in the eastern Croatian village of Korođ with a sizeable ethnic Hungarian community was opened officially on Tuesday evening and addressing the ceremony, Foreign Minister Gordan Grlić Radman said that Croatia and Hungary had a brilliant joint past and share common European values nowadays.

The local facility opens its doors to villagers after two-year refurbishment.

The ceremony of the opening of the centre was held on the occasion of Hungary's national holiday, when the Hungarians celebrate the first Christian king of Hungary, St. Stephen I, who established the Hungarian state in the 11th century.

A co-chairman of the bilateral committee for the protection of respective minorities in Croatia and Hungary, Zvonko Milas, said that both ethnic Hungarians in Croatia and ethnic Croats in Hungary enjoyed a high level of minority rights.

The Republic of Croatia and local authorities set aside two million kuna for the reconstruction of this centre. Ethnic Hungarian leader and a member of the Croatian parliament, Robert Jankovic thanked Croatia's authorities for the allocation of the funds.

More news about national minorities can be found in the Lifestyle section.

Monday, 19 August 2019

Exhibition of Photographs by French Artist Brigitte Lacombe to Be Held in Zagreb

ZAGREB, August 19, 2019 - Some of the works of the famous French photographer Brigitte Lacombe will be put on display in Zagreb's French Pavilion gallery within the Student Centre from 13 to 28 September.

The exhibition includes a total of 40 photographs that have resulted through her cooperation with influential filmmakers, the PRiredba Studio marketing agency said in a press release on Monday.

According to the official biography of this New York-based French artist, she received the Eisenstaedt Award for Travel Photography (2000), the Lifetime Achievement Award for Photography (Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, 2010), and the Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Travel & Portraiture (2012).

"As a special photographer, Lacombe has worked on many film sets starting with Alan Pakula’s 'All the President’s Men' and 'Fellini’s Casanova' both in 1975, and Steven Spielberg’s 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' in 1976."

She has worked on films by Martin Scorsese, Mike Nichols, Anthony Minghella, Spike Jonze, Bennett Miller, Lynne Ramsay, David Mamet, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Bernardo Bertolucci, Sydney Pollack, Sam Mendes, Michael Haneke, and others.

Her photographs have appeared in publications around the world including Vanity Fair, GQ, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, The New Yorker, New York Magazine and so on.

More culture news can be found in the Lifestyle section.

Tuesday, 13 August 2019

Certification of "Tesla Ways” Cultural Route Underway at Council of Europe

ZAGREB, August 13, 2019 - The certification of the project called "Tesla Ways" dedicated to scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla is being conducted by the Council of Europe and is to become the first official CoE Cultural Route dedicated to a researcher, the association called "the Cluster of Cultural Routes" reported on Tuesday.

The project has been developed for several years by the Cluster and experts from Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and the USA.

Thus, this cultural route encompasses thus two continents.

The Tesla Ways is one of several proposals of Cultural Routes projects in the Danube Region made by the Council of Europe Institute for Cultural Routes.

The explanation for the cultural route "Tesla Ways" says that the project "deals with the life and work of the engineer Nikola Tesla who contributed to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system."

The Tesla Ways guides the traveller through places were Tesla lived and worked. It includes sites in Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Austria, the Czech Republic and other European countries.

"Such a Cultural Route should bring together different domains: culture, science, education, tourism and economics, but it should also work actively to integrate local communities in the further development and preservation of industrial landscapes," according to an analysis of certified cultural routes of the CoE in the Danube region which was issued last October.

The route in Croatia connects Senj where Nikola Tesla's father worked a Serb Orthodox priest, and Smiljan, the village in Lika where the researcher was born in 1856, as well as the towns of Gospić and Karlovac where he attended primary and secondary school. Zagreb with its Technical Museum Nikola Tesla is also on the list.

In Serbia, the Nikola Tesla Museum and the Belgrade’s Museum of Science and Technology as well as some other sites are covered by the route.

Maribor, Slovenia, and the Czech capital city of Prague as well as Graz, Austria and some other European cities are part of the route, too.

Tesla was born in Smiljan on 10 July 1856 and died in New York on 7 January 1943. He was one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

More Nikola Tesla-related news can be found in the Lifestyle section.

Sunday, 7 July 2019

Zagreb Philharmonic, Music Youth of Novi Sad Launch Cultural Project

ZAGREB, July 7, 2019 - The Zagreb Philharmonic and the Music Youth of Novi Sad cultural institution have launched a joint, EU-funded project of cross-border cooperation during which the Zagreb Philharmonic will stage 24 concerts in the eastern Croatian towns of Ilok and Vukovar and in Novi Sad and Subotica, in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, performing music from Charlie Chaplin's films The Kid and The Circus.

Speaking at the launch of the project in Ilok on Friday, Zagreb Philharmonic director Mirko Boch said that this was one of the most important events in the history of the Zagreb Philharmonic, organised in cooperation with the Music Youth of Novi Sad with which the Zagreb Philharmonic had already successfully cooperated.

"Even though they are old, The Kid, made in 1921, and The Circus, made in 1928, are actually timeless movies as is the music composed for them. The original score will be performed by our 50 musicians under the baton of Maestro Krešimir Batinić," said Boch, adding that he hoped the project would contribute to what the region could offer in terms of cultural tourism.

The project will start in Novi Sad, with two concerts a day to be staged on September 3, 4 and 5, followed by concerts in Ilok on September 9, 10 and 11, while concerts in Subotica and Vukovar will be staged in May and July 2020.

The head of the Music Youth of Novi Sad, Milan Radulović, said that Novi Sad, this year's European Youth Capital which in two years' time will hold the title of European Capital of Culture, was eagerly awaiting the concerts by the Zagreb Philharmonic.

Zagreb Philharmonic conductor Batinić said that the project would be a challenge as well as a great experience because the orchestra would be performing music from the two Chaplin films while they were screened, which, he said, would require great concentration on the part of the conductor.

More culture news can be found in the Lifestyle section.

Thursday, 4 July 2019

Exhibition on Intangible Cultural Heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina Opened

ZAGREB, July 4, 2019 - An exhibition of the intangible cultural heritage of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, borrowed from the ethnographic collection of the Carmelite monastery of St Elijah near Tomislavgrad, southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, was opened in Zagreb's Klovićevi Dvori gallery on Wednesday.

The exhibition features 12 cultural phenomena from a preliminary list of intangible cultural heritage of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina which the entity has already nominated or will nominate for UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage.

Those phenomena include Konjić woodcarving (already on UNESCO's list), Kreševo egg shoeing, Kupres haymaking, the ganga and sevdalinka traditional songs, and diving from Mostar's Old Bridge.

The exhibition was opened on the occasion of the 53rd Zagreb International Folklore Festival, to start on July 17.

The Monastery of St Elijah on Buško Lake near Tomislavgrad collects and keeps traditional clothes, jewellery and objects of everyday use of all three constituent peoples - the Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks - from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Zagreb exhibition will be open until July 21.

More news about relations between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina can be found in the Politics section.

Saturday, 22 June 2019

China's Shanxi Province to Intensify Tourist and Cultural Exchange with Croatia

ZAGREB, June 22, 2019 - The Culture and Tourism Department of China's Shanxi Province, in cooperation with the Croatian-Chinese Friendship Society, in Zagreb on Friday organised a conference on cultural and tourism cooperation between the province and Croatia at which both sides expressed a desire to intensify their cooperation.

The conference was organised as part of activities marking 2019 as the year of cooperation between China and Croatia. It brought together over a hundred representatives of the Chinese province's tourism and culture sector, the Chinese Embassy, the Croatian Tourist Board, the Tourism Department of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce and Croatian travel agencies. Before the conference, several travel agencies held a meeting with potential Chinese partners and some of them signed cooperation agreements.

He Zhiyong, the managing director of a Shanxi-based travel agency, said that Croatia was very attractive to Chinese tourists.

"This is my third time in Croatia and I am doing all I can to establish business cooperation with one of Croatian partners, because tourists from our province want to come to Croatia. And we are telling them that they should go not just because of beaches and islands, but also because of Croatia's rich culture and history, which is also very attractive," he said.

He said that he did not have a deal with any Croatian travel agency yet, but believed that this would change soon and Croatian tourists would soon come to Shanxi to enjoy its historical and cultural attractions.

Tourism consultant Dubravka Davidović said that today's conference followed up on the 16+1 strategy to increase tourist cooperation between China and 16 Central and Eastern European countries.

"Since this is the year of cooperation between China and Croatia, we believe that we will have a lot more tourists from China this year than we have had so far, as was the case in other countries," Davidovic said, adding that some countries that hosted 16+1 meetings had seen fivefold increases in the number of Chinese visitors.

Shanxi Province is situated on the Loess Plateau in northern China. It has 271 cultural landmarks under state protection, which accounts for 11.5 percent of all such landmarks in the country. Many of the historical sites are included on the UNESCO world heritage list, including the Terracotta Army, a collection of terracotta sculptures of warriors dating from approximately the late third century BCE.

More news about relations between Croatia and China can be found in the Politics section.

Monday, 10 June 2019

Croatian Cultural Events Nominated for Prestigious European Awards

ZAGREB, June 10, 2019 - The European Festivals Association (EFA) and the international Europe for festivals, Festivals for Europe (EFFE) judging panel headed by Sir Jonathan Mills has short-listed 24 laureates among 715 applications for the EFFE 2019-2020 Awards with Music Biennale Zagreb and the Vukovar Film Festival running for the awards.

EFFE awards celebrates arts festivals that demonstrate artistic excellence and at the same time have a strong impact on the local and regional development of cultural cooperation.

EFFE – Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe is initiated by the European Festivals Association (EFA) and supported by the European Commission.

The winners will be presented during the EFFE Awards Ceremony in BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts Brussels on 26 September 2019.

This year saw the 30th edition of the Zagreb Music Biennale which presented almost 50 programmes with numerous guest composers from abroad as well as presenting new compositions by Croatian composers. More than 400 local and foreign performers participated in the biennale.

The next biennale will be held in April 2021.

The Vukovar Film Festival (VFF) – Festival of Danubian countries has been held in August every year for the past twelve years. Films are awarded in three categories and the winners get Golden Barge for the best long feature, Golden Barge for the best short feature and Golden Barge for the best documentary.

Over the past 12 years, VFF screened over 900 movies and attracted 300,000 spectators on aggregate.

More news about festivals in Croatia can be found in the Lifestyle section.

Tuesday, 28 May 2019

Conference on EU International Cultural Relations to Be Held in Rijeka

ZAGREB, May 28, 2019 - An international conference called “International Cultural Relations of the European Union – Europe, the World, Croatia" will be held in the northern Adriatic city of Rijeka on May 30 - 31 with about forty Croatian and foreign professors, researchers, cultural activists, diplomats and others participating, a press conference heard on Tuesday.

The conference is being organised by the Rijeka 2020 - European Culture Capital project, the Miko Tripalo Centre for Democracy and Rights and the University of Rijeka in cooperation with the Culturelink - Network of Networks for Research and Cooperation in Cultural Development and the Observatory of Cultural Policies (France).

The aim of this conference is to encourage dialogue about the opportunities and challenges of today’s international cultural cooperation and to analyse the modalities that lead to more intense and more functional global cooperation and exchange between the European Union and the world, the organisers say.

The Rijeka 2020 project coordinator Irena Kregar Šegota said that the project does not relate only to culture and artistic content but such series of conferences put Rijeka on the map as a relevant point in Europe when considering issues related to culture and cultural policies.

Kregar Šegota in particular highlighted a panel discussion on the diplomacy of cities based on culture and the role of big events such as the European Capital of Culture project as well as inter-continental cultural cooperation between Europe and Africa.

"The four main topics of the conference are: Role of cultural policies in fostering international cultural cooperation; Cultural networks, the expression of cultural change in international relations; Cultural Diplomacy: strengthening external relations between the EU and third countries; Croatia in international cultural cooperation," according to the information published on the website of the conference.

More news about culture in Croatia can be found in the Lifestyle section.

Tuesday, 14 May 2019

Rijeka and Trieste, 2020 Capitals of Culture and Science, Sign Cooperation Agreement

ZAGREB, May 14, 2019 - The Trieste International Foundation for Scientific Progress and Freedom, the University of Rijeka and the Rijeka 2020 company on Tuesday signed an agreement on cooperation that will culminate in 2020, when Rijeka will be the European capital of culture while Trieste will be the capital of science.

Stefano Fantoni, president of the Trieste foundation, Rijeka University Chancellor Snježana Prijić Samaržija and Rijeka 2020's director Emina Višnić signed the agreement.

Prijić Samaržija underlined that culture and science were being connected as part of a coincidence where two cities with a distance of only 70 kilometres between them become the centres of the most important events in Europe next year.

She added that the two towns had been cooperating for a long time in the fields of science and higher education and that the agreement signed today made that cooperation official.

We expect the two universities to continue sharing information and exchanging visits by their lecturers, she said.

Fantoni said that 2020 would be a very important year for this part of Europe, when all eyes in Europe would be on the two towns. That is our opportunity to show the enormous possibilities of this area, he said.

The two universities and two capitals in 2020 are connecting in a very good way, Višnić said.

Europe is at a turning point in its history, Višnić said, expressing confidence that culture, art and science can provide a framework for a new era for Europe following a period when focus was on economy and trade as a way of connecting EU countries.

More Rijeka news can be found in the Lifestyle section.

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