“10,000 Li’s” art festival – 2020

“10,000 Li” art festival premiered four theatre plays and accompanied by follow-up programme enabled the display of basic elements of human existence: the strength of love; the praise of life and existence; the essence of war which, together with theatre, has the longest tradition in the history of humankind; and the inevitability of death, which if often questionable.

The aim of the “10,000 Li’s” art festival was to introduce the audience and the participants to the immense Chinese culture with the tradition dating as far back as several millennia. The festival has deeply delved into the surreal Chinese literature, symbolism, music and visual art. We have opened doors to a world less known to our audience. Furthermore, having in mind the contemporary world affairs, we are convinced that such festival could only support the striving of our country to forge stronger cultural bonds with this friendly yet powerful country whose culture has so far been scarcely presented in our region, in theatre in particular.

One of the names of the Great wall (the first of the seven wonders of modern world) is “the road of 10,000 Li’s.” Li is an ancient Chinese unit of distance, equaling 500m in modern-day China. In the Chinese language, number 10,000 equals infinity, thus stands for an “infinitely long wall.” It was exactly this Wall where our four plays took place throughout different dynasties – and they tackled the praise of life, the harmony of death, the opulence of love and the art of war. Since the wall consists of numerous segments of varying age, sizes, materials and the construction style, it is in the same manner that our plays unrolled in the sections of this monumental Wall.

The festival took place in Belgrade, 18-26 Sep 2020, premiering all four plays; and was visited by audience far more interested than expected. Other than hosting guests of all ages, we had the pleasure of being visited by numerous Chinese guests, our citizens who reside and work in China, as well as representatives of the Confucius centre. A desired result is to perform the festival in China directly, hence confirm the determination for cultural exchange of our two countries.

Interestingly, the festival raised interest in both print and electronic media, including one of the most important world agencies, Sin Hua.

In the end, based on the fact that this was the first time ever in the history of Serbian theatre that plays were based on Chinese authors’ pieces, we strongly believe that cultural events such as this one can significantly contribute to international cooperation and to the increase of the number of Chinese tourists in our country.

The four plays were directed by Filip Gajić, Marija Mladenović, David Alić and Stevan Šerbedžija.

Art sector: Stevan Šerbedžija, Ivona Momirović, Nikola Đorđević. Miona Marković, Mitra Mladenović; Milica Filić; Stevan Zdravić; Dina Vučaj, Đurđica Bošković, Dragana Varagić, Marija Mladenović, Vahid Džanković, Danilo Lončarević, Olivera Golijanin, Anastasija Stošić, Gala Šalipur, Marija Pikić, Danilo Mihajlović, Milan Zarić, Gorana Balančević, Selena Tomašević, Andreja Rondović, Danica Ničić, Sanja Marković, Hana Beštić, Anita Ognjanović, Ana Pindović, Natalija Žigić, Hisaši Jamasaki Mihilo Vukelić, Filip Gajić.

Production-organization sector: Lidija Andrić, Filip Gajić, Petar Kuzmanović, Dank Vujović, Jovana Ilić, Dina Vučaj, Natalija Gajić, Dragana Perovanović.