In the 1990s, several international festivals in the field of performing arts sprang up in our country over a period of several years. In 1993, as a form of re-establishing cultural ties in the area of the former commonwealth, Ex Ponto appeared, which, from its multimedia beginnings, eventually developed into a theater festival, aimed at presenting artists mainly from the area of the eastern or southeastern part of Europe. In 1995, two festivals were created: Exodos, which brought the works of many big names of contemporary performing arts to Ljubljana and highlighted leading Slovenian artists, and after a long period of organizing annual festival editions, it switched to biennial operation and a different program design, and the City of Women as a form efforts for greater inclusion and presentation of female artists and creators, whose program covers various fields, among which performing arts have a prominent place. Mladi levi joined the festival in 1998, initially part of the Junge Hunde international network and aimed at presenting emerging artists, but in the course of development they began to include more prominent artists and also broadened the program by genre.
With the absence of this year's Ex Ponto festival due to the sudden death of its leader Damir Domitrović, it seems an appropriate moment to remember the festival that usually took place at this time, i.e. in the second half of September; to focus on the importance of Ex Pont and at the same time ask ourselves what the festival landscape is like after two decades since the creation of the aforementioned festivals.
Festival critics will take part in the conversation dr. BLAŽ LUKAN, ROK VEVAR and ZALA DOBOVŠEK, one of the founders of the Exodos festival dr. TOMAŽ TOPORIŠIČ, a longtime collaborator and co-creator of the Mladi levi festival program MOJCA JUG and program manager of the City of Women festival from 2009 to 2015 and former collaborator of the Ex Ponto festival MARA VUJIĆ. The discussion will be led by theater expert Ana Perne from the Slovenian Theater Institute.
