AIKYA: The Tapi Project & Lumbardhi Experimental Ensemble
Saturday, September 3 - 21:00
Kino Bahçe
Entrance: 2 euro
Lumbardhi is pleased to welcome the Indian band The Tapi Project in collaboration with Lumbardhi Experimental Ensemble, on Saturday, September 3, where doors will open at 21:00 and the performance starts at 22:00 at Kino Bahçe!
Tapi Project’s music and poetry have arrived through cultures and subcultures of modern India and the experiences of the modern and the ever changing world. Their live performances are a melting pot of the modern with the ancient and firmly rooted in the ever changing reality of the present.
Tapi’s music is woven like a fabric, organically grown on Yogi’s poetries. Through Swati's powerful and sensuous voice, the lyrics come alive, swallowing us in an ocean of emotions, singing stories about rivers, the cramped up life, lost values, and in essence, the universal search for the self.
Accompanied by the Lumbardhi Experimental Ensemble, led by Ilir Bajri and joined by Adorel Haxhiaj, Arian Randobrava and Pleurat Doki, Tapi returns to Prizren in attempt to bring diverse cultural, musical and dichotomic influences of life, from India and the world intertwined by musical responses from Kosova.
This sonic conversation will create a performance titled AIKYA, which means oneness.
The performance will be preceded by an Indian-Kosovar culinary experience and music that, starting from 20:00, will set the mood for this special journey.
This night is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports as part of LXX.
Lumbardhi Foundation and the Kosovo Philharmonic have the pleasure to announce the premiere of “Monade” composed by the pianist and multi-instrumentalist Robert Bisha, which will take place on September 17 at Lumbardhi Cinema in Prizren.
Following the solo piano performance "Home Neverland" in 2020, Bisha returned to Prizren this spring for an artistic residency where he began the process of research and composition, becoming familiar with the history of Kino Lumbardhi and the changing circumstances throughout its 70 years, through studies and meetings with members of the artistic community.
Starting from this research, he composed "Monade", a suite for pianoforte, orchestra, choir, cinematographic electronics, where the cinema is considered as an instrument included in the orchestra, vocal soloists and modernized folk instruments that explore key themes that belong to the city of Prizren.
For the premiere of "Monade" on September 17, Robert Bisha will be accompanied by members of the orchestra and choir of the Kosovo Philharmonic, on the occasion of the opening of their concert season.
More detailed details about the work and the event will be revealed in the coming days.
Lumbardhi x DokuFest: EVERYDAY REBELLION
Saturday, 6 AUGUST 2022 - 15:00
Facing climate crisis, a burnt-out system of ecological networks, broken habitat connections, and lost cultural and language diversity on a planet battered by human atrocities, we are in survival mode. Bringing justice, plentitude, conviviality, and liveliness to all will be of primary concern for decades to come, as a tremendous test within the history of humankind. This calls for a culture and practice of resistance on the every day.
Moderator: Defne Koryürek
Panelists: Ares Shporta, Levon Bağış, Jeton Jagxhiu and Sevil Baştürk
LUMBARDHI FOUNDATION
Exhibition: What if history belonged to us?
Curated by: Kumjana Novakova
Opening: Monday, Aug 08, 2022, 20h00
Shani Efendi House
Aug 09 > Sept 30
10:00 - 20:00
What might a feminist past traced by and with the others, look like?
Can we pluralize history?
Can we break linearity and propose the coexistence of many microhistories?
Can we grow (new) presents from the many other pasts?
What if history belonged to us? is a space that sprouts from these possibilities and nurtures different and diverse subjectivities.
We enter an exercise of worldmaking, a playground for speculative histories and futures and think of our own past / present / future as “what if...”: as in “what if national histories were feminist?”, “what if others were not erased from world-making”, “what if others were written into our culture”.
Parallel to the newly commissioned work by Diana Toucedo, the exhibition introduces the still invisible works of art from the peripheries, also, as an act of counter history to the Western feminist monoculture. Artists such as Azra Aksamija, Delphine Seyrig, Doplgenger, belit sağ, and Norika Sefa will be shown.
Thus, we will together propose acts of active subjectivities of history.
ARTISTS
Azra Aksamija
belit sa
Delphine Seyrig
Diana Toucedo
Doplgenger
Norika Sefa
Curator of the exhibition: Kumjana Novakova
Exhibition design collaborator: Nisa Bujari
Production: Ares Shporta
Production assistant: Fjolla Rabi
Visual identity and graphic design: Ali Cindoruk
Communication coordinator: Edi Gashi
Editor and Translator: Fjolla Hoxha
Administration and finances: Dua Misolli
This exhibition has been generously supported by all the artists and collaborators involved, and financially supported by the Swiss Development Cooperation, Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, Municipality of Prizren, CHwB Kosova, DokuFest, the French Embassy, the Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir and Anibar.
DokuFest and Lumbardhi are excited to present Hercules and Love Affair on August 8, 2022 at Kino Bahçe in Prizren, as part of this year's #DokuNights & #LXX line-up.
Hercules and Love Affair is a dance music project created by American DJ, singer, composer, musician and producer Andy Butler, in 2004. Consisting of a rotating cast of performers and musicians, the band work within the genres of house music, disco, techno and nu-disco.
Originally based in New York City, now based in Ghent, Belgium, Hercules and Love Affair were founded following Butler's collaboration with Anohni to produce the song "Blind", which was a hit single and became Pitchforks song of the year. Their 2008 debut album Hercules and Love Affair on DFA Records, received widespread critical acclaim. The band went on to record two albums for Moshi Moshi, “Blue Songs” in 2011, and then “The Feast of the Broken Heart” in 2014 which featured John Grant as guest on the single "I Try To Talk To You". Their fourth album “Omnion”, released in 2017 by Atlantic Records, featured Sharon Van Etten on the title track.
After a five-year hiatus, on 17 June 2022, the band released their fifth album “In Amber”, with which they will perform at Kino Lumbardhi as part of their european tour.
Tickets will be available at Kino Lumbardhi in Prizren, Servis Fantazia in Prishtina and online 
https://dokufest.com/en/2022/dokunights/hercules-love-affair
Lumbardhi is pleased to host the solo recital “Metamorphosis” by pianist Malik Halçe.
The solo recital consists of pieces by various composers from different periods and styles with massive contrasts between each other. The concert will begin with the most important and challenging pieces in the standard piano repertoire called four ballades (1831-1842) by one of the most unique piano composers, Frédéric Chopin. Subsequently, the program will be followed by a sonata for solo piano by Béla Bartók (1926), the kiss of the Child-Jesus (Le baiser de l'Enfant-Jesus) from Olivier Messiaen's twenty looks at the Child-Jesus (Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus) (1942), and a monumental work called Dante Sonata (Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata) (1849) by legendary composer, Franz Liszt.
Malik Halce is from Prizren. His piano training began at the Lorenc Antoni School of Music and continued at the State Conservatory of Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul, Turkey, to continue with the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, Norway. Currently, he studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music with Prof. Dráfi Kálmán in Budapest, Hungary.
He has participated in masterclasses of many well-known pianists such as Alicia Paleta Bugaj, Nikolay Demidenko, Denis Kozhukhin, Christian Wilm Müller, Ragna Schirmer, Johan Schmidt.
In 2012, Malik was awarded the second prize in the young talents’ competition, co-organized by Sedat Gürel - Güzin Gürel Arts Camp; Science Foundation and the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, where he performed before the audition in the accompaniment of the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra. In 2014, he was also awarded the first prize in the international piano competition "Young Pianist 2014" in Kosovo. Malik then performed with the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015.
He was invited to the Miami International Piano Festival in 2017 and 2018. During his stay in Miami, Malik gave numerous concerts and had the opportunity to work with world-renowned pianists, including Jorge Luis Prats, Kemal Gekic, Claudio Martinez -Mehner, Francesco. Libetta and Walter Ponce. In 2019, Malik gave concerts at the 10th International Chopin Piano Festival and the Autostrada Biennale in Kosovo.
This concert is made possible with the support of the Municipality of Prizren, the Municipality of Pristina, Cinemarine and KTV.
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Lumbardhi hosted a delegation with representatives from Europa Nostra and the European Investment Bank Institute, who are on an official visit to Kosova.
On this occasion, the visitors had the opportunity to learn about the history of Lumbardhi Cinema and the process of its revitalisation, steps that affected the selection of Lumbardhi amongst the winners of the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards for 2022. In the meeting, the parties coordinated the celebration which will take place in Prizren on August 7 as well as the main award ceremony scheduled for September 26th in the landmark building of the State Opera in Prague.
The European Commission and Europa Nostra have just announced the 2022 winners of the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards, funded by the EU Creative Europe programme. Among this year’s winners is “Lumbardhi Public Again”, in the category Citizens’ Engagement and Awareness-raising.
This year, which marks the 20th anniversary of Europe’s most prestigious Awards in the heritage field, 30 outstanding heritage achievements from 18 European countries have been awarded. These categories are in line with the latest developments and priorities regarding heritage policy and practice in Europe.
“The impact the “Lumbardhi Public Again” initiative has had on its local community is of very high quality and is notable for the way in which it has influenced cultural heritage policies and attitudes in the wider region. The creative engagement of young people in the activities is commendable and makes evident the multiple values of heritage sites to the sustainable economic and social development of cities,” stressed the Awards’ Jury.
The main Awards Ceremony will take place on 26 September in Prague, while the full press release and the detailed information can be found in the link below.
Lumbardhi Foundation and DokuFest have signed a three-year strategic partnership agreement, with the aim of developing joint-initiatives and programs, building capacities and sharing common resources.
The agreement includes LXX, the film program prepared for the 70th anniversary of Lumbardhi Cinema, which will also extend to the 21st edition of DokuFest, alongside an exhibition, a performance and public programs which will be revealed in the next days.
The collaboration foresees the creation of common work spaces, residencies, study spaces and production facilities, to support the development of local resources and creations, as well as advance the local and international collaborations with individuals and institutions engaged in the arts, film and education.
The agreement follows more than seven years of collaboration for the revival of Lumbardhi Cinema, development of platforms in the local, national and regional level, as well as the exchange of experiences between the organizations. It offers a mid-term framework which will be realized until 2025 through a series of joint events and projects in research, learning and production in visual and sonic arts.
In June, researcher, theorist, and professor Mitja Velikonja embarked in Prizren for a talk on the socio-political agency of graffiti in the Balkans. Dr.Velikonja presented his most recent book “Post-Socialist Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe'' which uses case studies of political graffiti in the post-socialist Balkans and Central Europe to explore the use of graffiti as a subversive political media. Following this presentation, Dr.Velikonja had a discussion with sociologist Tevfik Rada on the important role of graffiti on exhibiting the socio-political standpoints of subcultures in Prizren and wider.
The Politics of Graffiti: Talk with Mitja Velikonja was supported by FfAI.
About the author:
Dr. Mitja Velikonja is a Professor for Cultural Studies and head of Center for Cultural and Religious Studies at University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Main areas of his research include contemporary Central-European and Balkan political ideologies, subcultures and graffiti culture, collective memory and post-socialist nostalgia. His last monographs are The Chosen Few – Aesthetics and Ideology in Football-Fan Graffiti and Street Art (Doppelhouse Press, 2021), Post-Socialist Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe (Routledge, 2020, awarded as one of the best achievements of University of Ljubljana in the year 2020, already translated into Serbian and Albanian and in translation in Slovenian and Macedonian).
About the book:
Despite the increasing global digitisation, graffiti remains widespread and popular, providing with a few words or images a vivid visual indication of cultural conditions, social dynamics and power structures in a society, and provoking a variety of reactions. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as detailed interdisciplinary analyses of “patriotic”, extreme-right, soccer-fan, nostalgic, and chauvinist graffiti and street art, it looks at why and by whom graffiti is used as political media, and to/against whom is it directed? The book theorises discussions of political graffiti and street art to show different methodological approaches from four sites of meaning: context, author, the work itself, and audience. It is of interest to the growing body of literature focussing on (sub)cultural studies in the contemporary Balkans, transitology, visual cultural studies, art theory, anthropology, sociology and studies of radical politics. The book was published first in English (2020), translated in Serbian (2020) and Albanian (2022) and will be published this year also in Slovenian and Macedonian.