Balkan Trafic! celebrates its tenth anniversary
For its tenth edition, 1001 Valises and Bozar have the pleasure to introduce you to Balkan Trafik!, a festival dedicated to the cultures of South-Eastern Europe. The festival became a major event thanks to the originality of its programme and its atmosphere. Balkan Trafik! will be more festive and convivial than ever, reflecting an artistic vitality from a resilient part of our continent, still weakened by the hardships of the past.
After a memorable journey to Kosovo in 2003, Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Wieërs (1001 Valises) undertakes a mad challenge: to create a festival dedicated to Balkan music and cinema, with the aim of showcasing the cultural and historical wealth of the region, the cultures it cherishes, and the emotions it conveys.
The aims of the festival: promote intercultural dialogue, create a space where members of different communities can exchange knowledge, experiences through art, and most importantly, immerse the audience in an atmosphere based on togetherness and interaction with artists. Because Balkan Trafik! does not consider a guest as a passive member of the audience – on the contrary, the festival stimulates active participation at the events, a challenge renewed each year with enthusiasm by Nicolas Wieërs (1001 Valises) and Tony Van Der Eecken (BOZAR).
In ten years of existence, Balkan Trafik! has become a key cultural interface. The festival has managed to go beyond identity struggles in a region highly affected by conflicts, by multiplying collaborations, partnerships and by uniting different influences through a sense of belonging to European society. Perhaps in the future, the festival will provide not just an interface between East and West, but also between Northern and Southern cultures, finding similarities between the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, or even new artistic synergies around the common will of allowing music to thrive, to be part of our daily lives and to preserve it from any dominant model. An event full of promises for the future.
www.balkantrafik.com
www.bozar.be/en
