:“Riot" at the Sava:

It’s been quite an exciting beginning of the year here in Serbia. It all began at the end of February when a press conference of an LGBT group, that was supposed to happen in a publicly owned conference centre named by the river “Sava”, was cancelled by its new management. The new director proclaimed that gays are not welcome there.

Needles to say, this triggered much anger on “our side”, knowing that numerous LGBT press conferences had been held there in the last couple of years, without a single incident. A few days later, while trying to think of more concrete reactions, the perfect opportunity arouse. In the same centre, an international film festival started, and one of the first films shown was Gus Van Sant’s “Milk” – the story about first openly gay man who was elected for public office in California. So, this LGBT group staged a protest in front of the Sava centre, about 50 people showed up, gave out some leaflets and were about to leave, when about ten of us who are mostly involved in radical left activism got to an interesting idea. We got into the projection hall and just as the film was starting about 30 of us came out to the stage, in front of 2-3000 people, and tried to explain to the audience what happened at the same place only two days before. So, we shouted “stop homophobia” and were very quickly violently thrown out by security gorillas, but the point was made! We were all over the news! Not only did the homophobe director and city mayor apologize, but we had something that was the closest to a gay riot Serbia has ever seen. And you bet it was empowering!