Culture of Belgrade

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This article is about the culture of Belgrade, Serbia.
Belgrade hosts many annual cultural events, including FEST (Belgrade Film Festival), BITEF (Belgrade Theatre Festival), BELEF (Belgrade Summer Festival), BEMUS (Belgrade Music Festival), Belgrade Book Fair, and the Belgrade Beer Festival.^[1] The Nobel prize winning author Ivo Andrić wrote his most famous work, The Bridge on the Drina, in Belgrade.^[2] Other prominent Belgrade authors include Miloš Crnjanski, Borislav Pekić, Milorad Pavić and Meša Selimović. Most of Serbia's film industry is based in Belgrade, and one of the most notable films to be made there was 1995's Palme d'Or winning Underground, directed by Emir Kusturica. The city was one of the main centres of the Yugoslav New Wave in the 1970s: VIS Idoli, Ekatarina Velika and Šarlo Akrobata were all from Belgrade. Other notable Belgrade rock acts include Riblja Čorba, Bajaga i Instruktori and others. During the 1990s the city was the main centre (in the former Yugoslavia) of a musical style known as turbofolk. Today, it is the centre of the Serbian hip hop scene, with acts such as Beogradski Sindikat, Škabo, Marčelo, and most of the Bassivity Music stable hailing from or living in the city.

There are many foreign cultural institutions in Belgrade. Instituto Cervantes, Goethe-Institut and Centre Culturel Français are all located in central pedestrian Knez Mihailova Street. Other cultural centres in Belgrade are American Corner, Austrian Cultural Forum (Österreichischen Kulturforums), British Council, Confucius Institute, Canadian Cultural Center, Italian Cultural Institute (Istituto Italiano di Cultura), Culture Center of Islamic Republic of Iran and Russian Center for Science and Culture (Российский центр науки и культуры).