FLASH
Shkruar nga Emin Azemi
The Minister of Culture, Ms. Bisera Kostadinovska-Stojčevska, should re-examine this year's competition and declare these results invalid, returning the evaluation criteria to dignified levels.
Recently, the Ministry of Culture of North Macedonia has revealed the results of the competition for the publishing and cultural activity for 2024, leaving behind a thick cloud of ambiguity and absurdities.
Even this year, it was proven that the Ministry of Culture only formally sends people to commissions that have at least something to do with literature and culture, while the criteria for who should be funded, who should be punished and removed from the funding list - are set somewhere outside. this ministry.
This is not only this year's practice, but this year a wild tendency of elimination "within the species" emerged.
Before I address a letter to the Minister of Culture and the Prime Minister, for all these primitive bragging, I am listing below some anomalies that led to the work of the commission for publishing activity, whose work has left a lot of room for doubt and ambiguity:
1. The committee for publishing activity (especially the Albanian members) has no experience (neither theoretical nor practical) to evaluate the works and authors that had competed. If they had this experience, they would not allow the works that had been reprinted several times to pass by.
2. In the absence of this experience, someone from outside has played the role of mentor (read: the devil), suggesting with pencil in hand which authors, which titles, which magazines, which manifestations, and which publishers should be favored, which should stuck and which should not be funded at all.
3. The commission for publishing activity (especially the Albanian members) has favored a category of publishers and authors who do not lead an active literary-cultural life throughout the year, i.e. they do not produce literary and cultural values that would have any dynamic and impact on the public, but they come alive only in the month of November, when the competition of the Ministry is open.
4. The commission for publishing activities (especially the Albanian members) has favored (outside of any principled and professional criteria) only one cultural space (Tetova) allocating no less than nearly 70 thousand euros for nearly 50 projects, of which 9 are cultural manifestations and some magazines (about 10 sish)!
5. The Commission for publishing activities (especially the Albanian members) has punished the monthly magazine for culture and knowledge JUVENILJA, with over 300 pages and with sections where dramaturgy, literary criticism, essays, prose, etc. are encouraged. (spending a ridiculous amount of 1000 euros for four issues!!!), which has a nationwide editorial office, with distribution in Skopje, Tetovo, Tirana, Pristina, Shkodër, Zagreb, etc. and in all city libraries in Macedonia and in Kosovo and Albania...
6. The Committee for publishing activity (especially the Albanian members) has not considered at all the need and our proposal that in Skopje the Albanians have a dignified literary-cultural manifestation ("DAYS OF YOUTH") and as a result this Committee has proposed a very poor (something over 800 euros) for a (two-day) event that we had planned to hold at the end of September and which would have this physiognomy: to have the debating part about literature and the literary reading as a follow-up part. In the debating part, we had thought to raise for discussion (with the participation of researchers from Tirana and Pristina) inherent issues of literature, theater and dramaturgy, focusing on those topics that are more urgent, such as the lack of original dramaturgy in theaters ours, the promotion of literary criticism and literary review in the media, the promotion of culture and the habit of reading among the new generations, the intra-Albanian cooperation in culture within the Skopje-Prishtina-Tirana triangle as well as the establishment of a literary award named "Ernest Koliqi" which it would be a measure of quality and innovation in prose, drama and literary studies, mainly by authors within the area of Drin, Karadak and Vardar.
7. The commission for publishing activity (especially the Albanian members) has not kept account regarding the criterion of proportional support between Macedonian and Albanian literature-culture, because from the published data it appears that the financing of only two Macedonian cultural manifestations is too much times greater than the entire literary-cultural activity in the Albanian language.
8. The commission for publishing activities (especially the Albanian members) did not do any preliminary analysis before making a decision to finance the works and authors, because from the published data it results that there is a chaotic system of evaluation where the values that bring a work, the innovations and trends it brings, the volume of pages, the professional commitment of editors and lecturers. By the way, the more money you get a no. flyers, than four no. of JUVENILJE (!) and quite a few authors are selected (paddled) to be favored, without knowing on which pampering criteria the committee of Albanian members relied in advance.
9. The Commission for publishing activity (especially the Albanian members) has left several works and authors unfunded, who are not only much more deserving of the development of literary life in our country, but they also represent a model in literary activity for many reasons. that cultivate.
10. The committee for publishing activity (especially the Albanian members) has also left unfunded a project proposed by us (a selection of translated Macedonian stories), a work that was supposed to promote the tradition of cooperation between our cultures, aiming that next year we will make a selection of Albanian stories translated into Macedonian.
At the very end.
The Minister of Culture, Ms. Bisera Kostadinovska-Stojčevska, should re-examine this year's competition and declare these results invalid, returning the evaluation criteria to dignified levels.
Meanwhile, I wish all the authors who have been financed this year by the Ministry of Culture infinite success and prosperous creativity. This reaction has nothing to do with them, especially some of whom I continue to appreciate and have as friends.
In the following days, there will be an adequate and more clarifying communication with the relevant institutions regarding the anomalies presented in this year's competition of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Moldova.
Lini një Përgjigje