“If one were to seek a simple answer to the query about the content of the BITEF archives, it would most certainly indicate a sound and profound strife to spring free from a provincial and orchestrated frame of thought and culture, in general. BITEF is the most tangible evidence that in Belgrade, Serbia and Yugoslavia, cultural pluralism and universalism was the weapon for conquering freedom in the world of political monism and political bipolarism.” writes Branka Prpa, the former head of the Belgrade Historical Archives in the web presentation of the book produced for the 40^th anniversary of BITEF in 2007.

In 2005, the IAB started to process and classify the BITEF fond according to international standards so that the material until 2004 is very well systematized. A finely and creatively manufactured publication and an exhibition were produced which, according to Prpa, served as “an illustration of the power of cultural dialogue enacted with a non-pretentious definition of new theatrical tendencies.” Jovan Ćirilov wrote the introduction under the titel “testimony”, co-authors under the lead of Prpa were Olga Latinčić, Branka Branković, Svetlana Adžić. The book contains on about 300 pages in Serbian language the founding documents and minutes of the administrative council at the Belgrade authorities, program overviews, extracts (transcripts) from the talks after the performances with directors, actors and intellectuals, extracts from the newsletter that was accompanying every BITEF edition, many photographies, an overview of all the prices awarded and a name registry. It can be read at the Archives of Belgrade.

Producing the book and exhibition was, after the murder of Zoran Djindić in 2003 and the nationalist path reinforced, a kind of cultural resistance too. Prpa almost sentimentally looks back to BITEF’s beginning, when “[t]he petrified structures begun to crumble under the pulling force of the universalistic ideas which inevitably produce cathartic exhilaration with regard to the profanity and banality imposed [afterwards, JN] as a formula based on egotism and egocentrism of the individual and of the nation.”