Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations) in accordance with its great traditions has hosted in important gathering of Balkan scholars, intellectuals and cultural protagonists.
One of the most picturesque presentations of the gathering was the docu-drama inspiration of the renown Serbian intellectual and film director Zelimir Zilnik. Born in a Nazi-run concentration camp, socially engaged and critical towards censorship in the Communist era, outspoken critic of Milosevic regime, Zilnic confronts and gets inspired by the complex challenges of the new migratory movements in Serbia and the wider region.
The presentations and round table touched upon important aspects of historic and contemporary refugee crises, and the complex identity, cultural and social problems arising in these contexts.
Lecture by ICHA Chairman
The Chairman of the Scientific Board of the Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology, Ambassador Ljuben Tevdovski, had an extensive lecture on the “Identity of the Migrant in the Macedonian Culture and Heritage”. The lecture represented a roadmap of the interconnected history of art and migration in Macedonia and the Eastern Mediterranean from the antiquity to the contemporary times. In conclusion to his lecture Dr. Tevdovski emphasises exposes the migrant nature of the contemporary Macedonian identity, exposes the contemporary paradox of a Diaspora nation that transforms overnight into geo-political migration barrier of Europe.
The voices of the intellectuals, so frequently drowning and disappearing in the national political debates, were given new space and meaning in Paris and their artistic and scientific inspirations and transformations of the migration phenomena has provided new arguments and suggested new important prospects and pushed for the values of openness, reconsideration and education through life experience.
