Biljana Srbljanović

Biljana Srbljanović (Serbian pronunciation: [bǐʎana sr̩bʎǎːnoʋitɕ]; Serbian Cyrillic: Биљана Србљановић; born 15 October 1970) is a Serbian playwright.

Biljana Srbljanović
Биљана Србљановић
Srbljanović in June 2008
Born (1970-10-15) 15 October 1970
Stockholm, Sweden
NationalitySerbian
EducationFaculty of Dramatic Arts
Alma materUniversity of Arts in Belgrade
OccupationPlaywright

She has written eleven plays for the theater and one TV screenplay for Otvorena vrata TV series that ran on Radio Television of Serbia during the mid-1990s. Her plays have been staged in some 50 countries. Srbljanović is also a part-time lecturer at the Faculty of the Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. On 1 December 1999 she became the first foreign writer to receive the Ernst Toller prize. She is the recipient of various theatre awards, including the Slobodan Selenić Award, the Osvajanje Slobode Award, the Belgrade City Award, The Statuette of Joakim Vujić and the Sterija Award.

Early life

Srbljanović was born on 15 October 1970 in Stockholm as a daughter of a member of the Yugoslav embassy diplomatic staff. In 2010, she made a speech at the Akademietheater in Vienna, where she described her father as an emigrant, but this information is more than questionable in view of a member and political representative of an embassy. The wrong indication of Belgrade as the place of birth was obviously made public by herself at the beginning of her career. This false information is to be read again and again in some online biographies on her person.[1][2][3]

Writing career

Srbljanović obtained her dramaturgy degree in 1995 at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. The first play she wrote, Beogradska trilogija (The Belgrade Trilogy), was premiered in 1997 in Belgrade, Serbia at the Yugoslav Drama Theater. After its huge success, the play was staged in many other countries, including Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, England, and the Scandinavian countries.

In April 1998 her second play, Porodične priče (Family Stories), was written in Belgrade and staged at Atelje 212. It won the Best New Play Award at the theatre festival in Novi Sad, Serbia and was later staged in Germany, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, United States, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France and elsewhere.

In December 1999, Srbljanović completed The Fall, which premiered in July 2000 at the City Theater Festival in Budva, Montenegro. Due to lack of public interest, the play was quickly erased from the program of Belgrade's theaters.

The young artist can also be seen in the Serbian movie Land of Truth, Love and Freedom (Zemlja istine ljubavi i slobode) as an actress in a leading role.[4]

The premiere of Supermarket, her fourth play, took place in May 2001 at the Festival of Vienna, Austria. It is still staged in many European countries.

In late 2003, Srbljanović completed her fifth play, America, Part Two. This became Serbia's most popular play in 2003 and 2004.

Srbljanović's next play, Skakavci (Locusts), won the New Theatrical Realities Award, one of Europe's most prominent theatre awards. In the 2005-06 season, German theater magazine Theater Heute proclaimed Srbljanović the best foreign playwright of the season.[5]

Her latest play This Grave Is Too Small For Me has attracted international press attention as well as acclaim from various audiences in Europe.[6]

Political career

In 2007 Srbljanović joined the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), with an additional role as a member of the party's political council.[7] Srbljanović was LDP's candidate for mayor of Belgrade in the 2008 Serbian local elections. She has distanced herself from the party afterwards.

Views and opinions

Srbljanović has for decades been an outspoken figure in the Serbian public sphere.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, during her university days, Srbljanović was a close friend of Isidora Bjelica and wrote for the right-wing Pogledi magazine.[8]

By mid-1990s, Srbljanović's political views swung to the left as she began fiercely opposing the policies of Slobodan Milošević as well as views held by individuals and parties in the Serbian political opposition on the right side of the political spectrum. In 1997, as one of the guests on Olja Bećković's Utisak nedelje talk programme on Studio B, Srbljanović squared off against her former Pogledi editor-in-chief Miloslav Samardžić over the issue of American magnate George Soros injecting funds into the pro-Western Serbian media outlets, primarily B92.[9]

Even after the 5 October 2000 Overthrow in Serbia, she continued railing against what she viewed to be "the irresponsibility of the political elite in Serbia", "Serbian violent nationalism" and "the culture of violence and exclusion in Serbian daily life". From May 2006 until February 2009, she maintained her own blog on the B92.net site[10] where among other things she frequently criticized various individuals, mostly Serbian politicians and other public figures who displayed political opinions she opposes such as Nebojša Krstić, adviser to the Serbian president Boris Tadić.

In 2010 Srbljanović opened a Twitter account where she continued commenting on Serbian politics. During late summer 2011, she got into several heated exchanges with the Democratic Party (DS) spokeswoman Jelena Trivan.[11][12]

The artist is signatory of the Declaration on the Common Language of the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins within the project Languages and Nationalisms (Jezici i nacionalzmi).[13] The declaration is against political separation of four Serbo-Croatian standard variants that leads to a series of negative social, cultural and political phenomena in which linguistic expression is enforced as a criterion of ethno-national affiliation and as a means of political loyalty in successor states of Yugoslavia.[14]

Controversy

Libel suit

In March 2001, Srbljanović was sued for libel by film director Emir Kusturica as a result of her Vreme magazine op-ed in which she passingly refers to the director as "Milošević's immoral profiteer", accusing him of "direct collaboration with the [Milošević] regime through Milorad Vučelić [Kusturica's friend and Serbian state-owned TV (RTS) general-director]" based on her claim that Kusturica's 1995 film Underground was "mostly financed by the Milošević-controlled RTS".[15][16] Six months later, in September 2001 right before the first court date, Vreme magazine organized a mediation attempt between the two parties, with Kusturica and Srbljanović meeting face to face in the magazine's offices.[17] At the meeting Kusturica reportedly expressed willingness to drop the lawsuit if Srbljanović issues a public apology, which Srbljanović refused.[17] The next day at the first court date Srbljanović once again rejected the offer of a public apology.[17]

In December 2003, two and a half years after the initial filing, a municipal court (opštinski sud) in Belgrade ruled in Kusturica's favour as Srbljanović's claims couldn't stand up to closer scrutiny after Kusturica's attorney Branislav Tapušković provided a complete documentation of Underground producers and financiers, proving that funding mostly came from several France-based production companies while parts of the movie were only shot on RTS sound stages in Belgrade.[18]

Other

In July 2007 Srbljanović criticized basketball player Milan Gurović on her blog, referring to him as "that tattooed idiot", for having a tattoo of World War II Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović on his arm.[19]

Additionally, Srbljanović aroused controversy with her 18 February 2012 tweet referring to the news item about former Serbian interior minister Dragan Jočić getting extra police security following the arrest of the organized crime figure Luka Bojović. Srbljanović's tweet — "'Jočić getting extra security detail' why? he ain't gonna run" — mocked the fact Jočić is physically disabled ever since his 2008 car accident.[20]

Srbljanović set off a torrent of negative sentiment from the general public in Serbia after making an awkward joke on Twitter during the catastrophic May 2014 floods. The tweet in Serbian read "Excuse me for not being compassionate, but you have 10 more minutes to swim to the gallery for the promotion of the book Tomato". A flurry of tweets, Facebook posts and news updates were quick to condemn the post, and her Twitter account @leyakeller became unavailable not long after [21]

In January 2019, Srbljanović got into a vicious online exchange with the actor and newly-appointed Movement of Free Citizens (PSG) leader Sergej Trifunović whom she had previously collaborated with professionally in addition to an overlap in their respective studies at the University of Arts' Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDU). Prompted by Trifunović's tweet about her early 1990s right-wing views and political activism,[22] Srbljanović launched into an obscenity-laced, insult-laden tirade on her Facebook account, denouncing Trifunović's morality, professionalism, personal hygiene, and accusing him of responsibility in the murder of Zoran Đinđić.[23][24][25][26] Serbian actress and film producer Bojana Maljević, who has also had a prior professional history with Srbljanović, supported the veracity of the event Trifunović mentioned in his original tweet.[27][28]

Personal

In 2006 Srbljanović married Gabriel Keller, former French ambassador in Serbia. The couple divorced in 2014.[29] Srbljanović is related to Radovan Karadžić, wartime political leader of Bosnian Serbs, sentenced to 40 years in prison by the international tribunal at The Hague.[30][31]

Drug possession arrest

Srbljanović got detained by police on 1 December 2011 while buying cocaine in Belgrade from twenty-seven-year-old street dealer Miloš "Šone" Stanojčić; she was subsequently cited for possession of illegal substances.[32] According to Serbian police, she bought drugs on two occasions, each time paying €60.[33][34] Srbljanović ended up avoiding prison by taking a plea deal from the prosecutor's office in late March 2012 — agreeing to donate RSD200,000 to charity as well as to testify against the drug dealer who sold her the drugs.[35]

See also

References
  1. Interview in Yugoslav teen magazine Super Tin (June 1997) on the website Yugopapir, retrieved on 2018-08-18.
  2. Article commemorating the assassination of Yugoslav ambassador in Sweden in Kurir, retrieved on 2018-08-18.
  3. Text of the speech (emigrant; p. 14) on the website issuu, retrieved on 2018-08-18.
  4. Full movie (with English subtitles) on YouTube, retrieved on 2018-08-22.
  5. B92 - News - Society - Serbian playwright wins prestigious award Archived 2007-09-29 at the Wayback Machine
  6. Brownell, Ginanne (22 May 2014). "Biljana Srbljanovic on Her New Play". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 7 September 2015.
  7. B92 - Vesti - Lečić napustio predsedništvo LDP-a - Internet, Radio i TV stanica; najnovije vesti iz Srbije
  8. Stojićević, Slobodan (26 March 2008). "СТАРА ЉУБАВ ЗАБОРАВА НЕМА". Politika. Retrieved 20 December 2014.
  9. Samardžić, Miloslav (2008). "Nikola je bio najbolji!". Svedok. Archived from the original on 21 December 2014. Retrieved 20 December 2014.
  10. http://blog.b92.net/blog/105/Biljana%20Srbljanovi%C4%87/ Biljana's blog.b92.net
  11. Okršaj Srbljanović-Trivan na Tviteru Archived 2012-02-25 at the Wayback Machine;Blic, 23 August 2011
  12. Svađa Biljane Srbljanović i Jelene Trivan na Tviteru;Blic, 20 September 2011
  13. Derk, Denis (28 March 2017). "Donosi se Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku Hrvata, Srba, Bošnjaka i Crnogoraca" [A Declaration on the Common Language of Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins is About to Appear] (in Serbo-Croatian). Zagreb: Večernji list. pp. 6–7. ISSN 0350-5006. Archived from the original on 23 May 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  14. Jezici i nacionalzmi, official website, retrieved on 2018-08-16.
  15. Kusturica encore montré du doigt;allocine.fr, 27 September 2001
  16. Umesto pomirenja - tužba;Glas javnosti, 14 September 2001
  17. "Ko je (ne)moralan?". blic.rs. 14 September 2001.
  18. Srbljanović kriva za klevetu;Večernje novosti, 28 December 2003
  19. Biljana Srbljanovic blog, 21 July 2007
  20. Biljana Srbljanović se sprda s invalidima! Archived 29 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine;Kurir, 25 February 2012
  21. Kurir Daily, 19 May 2014 Archived 28 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  22. https://twitter.com/WhistlerDick/status/1086751247636594690 tweet by Sergej Trifunović on 19 Jan 2019, 2:24pm
  23. Facebook post by Biljana Srbljanović on 19 Jan 2019, 3:59pm
  24. M., M. (20 January 2019). "Pljušte psovke i uvrede između Sergeja Trifunovića i Biljane Srbljanović". Blic. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  25. Živanović, K. (22 January 2019). "Trifunović: "Pucaju" na mene iz svih raspoloživih oružja". Danas. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  26. "Biljana Srbljanović, jedna od najuglednijih dramatičarki u regiji, po mrežama se tabloidno mlati sa Sergejom Trifunovićem". Telegram.hr. 20 January 2019. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  27. https://twitter.com/BojanaMaljevic/status/1086759243242459137 tweet by Bojana Maljević on 19 Jan 2019, 2:56pm
  28. M., M. (21 January 2019). "U raspravu Sergeja Trifunovića i Biljane Srbljanović se uključila i Bojana Maljević. I nije branila NJU". Blic. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  29. PressOnline: Razvela se Biljana Srbljanovic i ima novog decka, PressOnline, 17.7.2014
  30. Kolega, Katarina (8 March 2006). "Krv prenosi samo viruse". Slobodna Dalmacija. Archived from the original on 19 August 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2019.
  31. "Intervju Biljane Srbljanović Slobodnoj Dalmaciji: Krv prenosi samo viruse". Glas javnosti. Tanjug. 10 March 2006. Retrieved 24 February 2019.
  32. "Biljana Srbljanović se izvukla za kokain!". Frankfurtske vesti. 23 March 2012.
  33. ""Od Srbljanovićkinog kokaina sam mogao da napravim špansku seriju"". Frankfurtske vesti. 3 November 2012.
  34. "French envoy's wife accused of possession of cocaine". News.Az. 13 March 2012. Archived from the original on 1 February 2014. Retrieved 4 November 2012.
  35. Dileru Biljane Srbljanović 3,5 godine zatvora, Večernje novosti (in Serbian)
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