CENTAR

Conferences and sessions of the OSCE, UNESCO, IMF and World Bank have taken place here. Placido Domingo and Monserrat Caballé number amongst the distinguished guests, as well as the likes of Miles Davis and B.B. King. The renowned Belgrade Film Festival FEST hosts its gala screenings here. Then you have the office spaces, stores and boutiques, art galleries and bookshops, all of which are still in use today. Filmmaker Ivan Marković portrays the huge complex, designed in the late seventies by architect Stojan Maksimović, in solitude and silence. Only a housekeeping team gives life to this once futuristic structure, elements of which can be seen in the film's long takes. And though the complex's guardians might vacuum the floors and walls, wipe every shelf clean, scrub the floor and make small repairs, the glamour of the Tito era seems nevertheless to have disappeared together with the breakup of Yugoslavia. The Sava Centar, one of the largest congress centres in the whole of Europe, has long been in need of renovation and yet private investors continue to get cold feet. Silently but surely the decline runs its course. NaF