Legacy of Resistance

A community theatre documentary on civic protest in Belgrade
A Success Story from the Culture for Democracy Programme

For a hundred years, Belgrade and Serbia have not stayed silent. From the interwar period to the present, injustice has rarely passed without a response from at least one part of society, antifascist, anti-war, anti-corruption, and pro-democracy movements that formed, dissolved, and regrouped, each generation convinced it was the first to rise. Yet resistance here has always been a kind of tradition: unwritten, absent from any official curriculum, and still somehow passed from one generation to the next.

Legacy of Resistance is a community theatre piece that turns this inheritance into a living archive. It has no authors in the classical sense, it was assembled from personal memories and testimonies, expert lectures, and literature and no audience in the classical sense, because it is performed by everyone together. Created by Reflektor teatar in co-production with Centar E8 and directed by Milena Bogavac, the work brought young artists and activists into dialogue with older generations, gathering first-hand recollections of protests, uprisings, and civic mobilisations across a century of the country’s history.

On 29 June, Legacy of Resistance was performed at the Parobrod Cultural Centre in Belgrade, a deliberately quiet piece, in which audience and performers read the text together and share their own experiences. “We used various tools and techniques from documentary theatre, but in a different, more democratic form, participatory theatre, where we read the play together with the audience, a play we also wrote together with people from our own society,” says director Milena Bogavac. “Tradition of Resistance deals with a historical phenomenon and a historical period that shaped us to a great extent, both as a community and as individuals. It was important to us to have a form around which we could take some courage and gather. We tried to make a performance that is quiet, one in which we share our experiences.”

Rather than staging resistance as spectacle, the piece asks who the “small people” behind the “big protests” really are, and how ordinary participation has shaped both individuals and society. It insists, too, on decentralisation, treating Belgrade not as a centre but as a shared civic space belonging to everyone whose history has passed through it. Legacy of Resistance is, by design, unfinished, a work in progress that changes with every performance, as each group of participants leaves its inheritance to the next. Like the resistance it documents, it cannot be completed, only continued.

Legacy of Resistance is supported through the Culture for Democracy programme implemented by Heartefact Fund, co-financed by the Swiss Government.

Photos: Marina Milosavljević

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Open call for youth participation in the regional VIBE project

Heartefact announces an open call for young people from Serbia to participate in the regional VIBE project, implemented in cooperation with Arsis from Albania and Juventas from Montenegro. Fill out the application form by June 6, 2025.

CALL FOR PROJECT PROPOSALS: GRANTS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC PROJECTS (REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA)

The Culture for Development project is announcing the Artistic Grant Scheme Call for project proposals to allocate grants for the implementation of artistic and cultural projects in the Republic of North Macedonia. The objective of this call is to support the development and implementation of socially relevant and culturally enriching contemporary artistic projects that promote diversity in artistic practices and expressions, address critical social issues, and foster community development.

Voices from the Margins – Seminar for Human Rights Defenders in Serbia Held

From April 24 to 27, 2025, the first seminar of the “Voices from the Margins” program was held in Ub, Serbia. The program aims to empower emerging human rights defenders from local communities across the country. The seminar brought together eleven participants from various cities and communities who, over an intensive four-day program, had the opportunity to strengthen their capacities for human rights work through lectures, workshops, and discussions.

Open Call: Beldocs Festival (Kosovo-Serbia Visiting Program)

Heartefact invites young people from Kosovo to apply for a four-day visit to Beldocs – the International Documentary Film Festival taking place in Belgrade. The visit will be organized from May 22 to May 25, 2025 (Thursday to Sunday), during the festival’s official dates of May 21 to May 27 2025.

Call for Project Proposals: Artistic Grants for Implementation of Cultural and Artistic Projects

Jana Milivojević at the residency in France as part of the Playground project

Our young author Jana Milivojević stayed in France, in Pont-a-Mousson, where during the one-week residency she developed and publicly presented her text “We don’t have a camper, and even if we did, we wouldn’t tell you”.

A seminar was held for the new generation of the Human Rights Leadership program

Heartefact, in partnership with the Slovenian 8th of March Institute, from March 27 to 30, 2025, organized a seminar within the project Human Rights Leadership. The goal of the seminar was to empower 18 activists from different parts of Serbia who were selected through a public call to participate in this one-year program.

Nađa Mišković at the residency in Romania as part of the Playground project

Our young playwright Nađa Mišković spent last week in Romania, in Targu Mures, where during her residency at Teatrul Ariel she worked on her text “Will we see the sun?” based on the motifs of the Turkish folk tale “80 eyes”.

Sarajevo successfully hosted the beginning of the Atelier program for young playwrights

Last week, Sarajevo successfully hosted the first module of the Atelier program workshop for young playwrights as part of the new Sarajevo Theater Showcase/New Theater Market project, funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe program.

Sarajevo Theatre Showcase – open call for the inaugural atelier for playwrights

Sarajevo Theatre Showcase announces an open call for the inaugural Atelier for Playwrights. We invite participants from the following countries to apply Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo, Slovenia, and Serbia.

The new Sarajevo Theatre Showcase launched in Sarajevo as part of the European project New Theatre Market

Today, a press conference was held in the Sarajevo War Theater (SARTR) on the occasion of the start of the New Theatre Market project, the crown of which is the newly established Sarajevo Theatre Showcase, which will be held in the second week of September in Sarajevo. The leader of the project is the SARTR theater with partners: Heartefact from Serbia, Ulysses Theater from Croatia, Binario Vivo from Italy and Para Film & Theatre from Norway.

The Festivity of Otherness was held in Paris

From January 9 to 11, 2025, the Festivity of Otherness was held in Paris. After the Zagreb version of the festival in November, when three plays created as part of the Eclectic of Otherness project co-financed by the European Union were shown on the theater stage of the Arterarij organization, Heartefact House hosted the Belgrade version of the festival in December last year. Lavoir Moderne Parisien hosted the Parisian version of the festival, rounding off the first three editions of the festival.