EUROFEST 2012: BEHIND THE SCENES
The Belarus venture was quite interesting for oikotimes.com team. As expected the extreme cold was something not easy to get used to. This year the national selection returned to BTRC after two years which also coincides with two years of extreme poor results. The experience in the Belarusian selection started with the offer of the national broadcaster to host three oikotimes editors in Minsk for some days.
At first I have to admit I thought there will be some pressure and manipulation of my writings while personally I hoped to find many fall outs and irregularities taking place in front of me, based on what many think of the Belarusian methods abroad. The outcome was exactly the opposite: no one from BTRC even tried to interfere with the texts, no artist made special approaches to get extra promotion from the site and international media could access any possible area and room in the hall.
Impressed enough? Well as Olivier told me, hosting is all about the details: national broadcaster gave us a sufficinet amount of money for food and drink per day. Why I mention that? Because I am still recovering from the 3,5 Euros per bottle of water in Dusseldorf!
Someone would expect that censorship would apply to the international media in immediate or not way. On the contrary BTRC was happy that the texts included both good and negative comments on the participants and guest performances and praised the objectivity to the contest.
Now, the accuse Alyona Lanskaya that she and her team found a way to organize fans to cast their votes for her as she won the televoting. But is this a scandal for Belarus actually? I know similar incidents happening in Malta, Cyprus not to mention major countries as well. It is widely known that if you have the money you can buy massive voting services, therefore it is no surprise.
But according to Telegraph.by, I am glad to read that President Lukashenko, who’s fame is far beyond the level of democracy had the guts to ask for investigation of the televoting results. Well done Mr President.
The show was glorious as there are few countries who are doing shows like this: fast shows with lots of stars and stars who are big names. Lys Assia was extremely brave to attempt such a trip at her age and brought definitely a historic essence to the show. Philip, Sakis, Alexander and Ruslana were simply the acts the fans wanted to see while Koldun is obviously preparing his 2013 participation (some sites presented the info as exclusive when they forget that in JESC 2010 he revealed to oikotimes.com he is intending to come back to Eurovision!)
There are also some moaning that Alyona is about to change her song for Baku. I personally believe that you have to fight for the song with which you won but then again, it is in the BTRC rules, the right for the winner of Eurofest to change the song if he or she wishes! So what’s the problem with some people again?
In terms of safety the capital of Belarus was obviously secure enough as the snow covered the city. There was no danger what so ever. Unfortunately due to work and extreme cold we weren’t able to explore the city, which we visited back in 2012 for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. The food on the other hand was just a descent effort but this country definitely need some Greek chefs!
President Lukashenko might not attended the final but there were special press pass given to us just for security reasons. As you can see in the photo they are amazing and will definitely be the highlight of my eurovision passes.
One last thing that impressed me and Yannis was that this time the control and security check at the airport including travel insurance and VISA were done extremely fast! In 2012 it took both of us more than an hour to get them through, now it took us less than 10 minutes!
Volunteers were simply amazing: mostly persons who worked in JESC 2010 were the ones who helped us more than anything. Despite poor English they lost their sleep to bring us back and forth from the airport and realizing every possible wish (normal or illogical) we had. Yassia, Irene, Yulia and Anya were few of the girls who made everything easy for us! Thank you girls
It’s obvious the closed behind borders Belarus is trying to reach the world and fortunately for Europeans they do it through music. Somehow I have the feeling that this country is already next in the line up to host the contest in the upcoming years.
With special thanks to Anstasiya and Olga!
