[ForumGLBTQ]
report da belgrado
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Queer beograd
A report on the Queer Beograd Festival
In Beograd from may 3 -7 Queer Beograd Festival took
place celebrating
the
right to freedom of sexual diversity. The idea for an
indoor festival
came
about because of the impossibilty of holding a pride
march in Beograd,
this
indoor festival was seen as an achievable tactic in
the face of the
violence
experienced at the 2001 pride and the cancellation of
the 2004 pride
due to
the threat of violence.
People from Beograd, Novisad, Macedonia,Croatia,
Slovenia, Berlin,
Munich,
Frankfurt, Vienna, and London attended the festival
The aim of the
festival
was to build positive energy in the queer community,
to provide a safe
space for the sharing of ideas and culture and through
this to combat
the
pervasive homophobia of Serbian society.
Many events took place over the 6 days of the
festival, both inside the
BGS
building which acted as the main venue and in other
more public spaces.
Self
defence trainers from Munich taught a 3 day self
defence workshop and
each
day workshops took place which included theatre,
gender and sexuality,
safer
sex, multi relationships, roma womens issues and S/M
culture.
An exhibition of works by artists from slovenia and
beograd was made in
the
BGS space and an info kiosk-café was set up for the
duration of the
festival, here people could relax, eat lunch, take tea
or coffee,
socialise
and read materials on queer issues from around around
the world.
3 evening events took place in the BGS building, an
exhibition opening
and
festival launch, a presentation by queer zagreb with a
film screening
and a
performance event featuring act women from beograd and
Jet Moon from
london.
All of these events were well attended and attracted
different crowds.
On
Friday night a local club was used to host an all
woman band event -
featuring Tribade a lesbian from paris, lollobrigida
girls from
Slovenia and
bitchkarte from Beograd. On Saturday a street
action-party was held in
the
main street of Beograd with the theme no more
violence in the
streets, a
banner was hung in the street, food not bombs was
served, music played
and
flyers were distributed giving information about
discrimination,
encouraging
freedom and tolerance. Everyone was nervous about
going to the street
but we
did it and this was an empowering moment for those
present.
We hope that people from both inside and outside of
Beograd can benefit
from
these stories as a demonstration of the power of self
organisation and
resistance to oppression, to build a greater change
and freedom within
Beograd.
plans for a bigger queer beograd festival in 2006 are
underway.
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