Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives
Press Room
ANNIVERSARY
July 6, 1999. The young exhibition space of the Archives, the Galeria Centralis welcomed the media and visitors to a mysterious event. The minimalist invitation previously sent out stirred up the imagination of the public that began to speculate whether what the Archives had come up with this time.
THE NOTE
“Through the coincidental coming together of historic events, those listening to the arguments in the legal protest in Parliament passed a slip of paper from hand to hand with news of János Kádár’s death.” MTV 1. News. July 6, 1989.
On July 6, 1999, at 9:16 a.m., the occasion of the tenth anniversary of a historic coincidence, Centralis Galeria would like to invite you to a recollection of the chance event (Nádor u. 11., Budapest).
The event lived up to the expectations of the invitees, as those present could be part of a historical reconstruction of the “coincidence” of the death of János Kádár, a significant political figure of the 20th century, and a court decision serving historical justice.
For further details, see our virtual exhibition recalling the event.
Blinken OSA – Night of the Museums, June 27, 2020 – Online
This unprecedented Night of the Museums will be online, Blinken OSA offers a rich variety of cultural and artistic programs. There will be an interesting report about Hungarian museums, archives, and libraries titled The Laborers of Culture. Data on the Situation of Public Collections. It will be available online all through the night. What follows will be an interesting house tour by Iván Székely around the Goldberger House. After the tour, our colleague Örs Lehel Tari will give an interesting presentation on 1989 regime change.
One of the highlights of the program will be the online discussion between art historian József Mélyi and editor-reporter Júlia Ránki. The special edition of this conversation will focus, among other things, on the Night of the Museums, on the museum development project Liget, on new decrees and laws, and, above all, on COVID-19 and the museums. The discussion will be followed by an online public lecture by András Mink, historian, titled Where Did the Democratic Opposition Disappear?. There are no Nighs of the Museums without exhibition at Blinken OSA, so this year the exhibition titled POST-SOVIET – The Photos of Lenke Szilágyi 1990–2002 Virtual exhibition will be opened by Endre Kukorelly.
The exhibition opening will be followed by a film screening, and the online mode will give the chance to "repeat" some program elements for those who cannot speak Hungarian.
Parallel film screenings of András Szirtes film director and Dalia Neis (VSP fellow)
Birds (8 mins.) - András Szirtes Goray 1648 (7 mins.)- Dalia Neis
Gravitation(21 mins.) - András Szirtes Saints (5 mins.) - Dalia Neis
Diary no. 10 (25 mins.) - András Szirtes Missing Meilich (21 mins) - Dalia Neis
Time: Tuesday, March 10, 2020 at 6:00 p.m.
Location: Blinken OSA Archives, 1051 Budapest, Arany János u. 32.
This film program forges a rare intergenerational dialogue between two artist-filmmakers who work with the essay form as a means to subvert and reimagine the archive, its relationship to history and memory.
March 4, 2020, 6pm
Religion on trial? Film and religion during Communism
This film screening event presents Communist-era representations of religion of trial. We contrast a Khrushchev-era anti-religious propaganda film from the Soviet Union with a Hungarian film that employs an ethnographic eye on its object of derision. The screenings will be followed by a discussion with the curators and researchers of the Hidden Galleries project, James Kapaló and Kinga Povedák who will present their own research and that of Hidden Galleries collaborator Tatiana Vagramenko.
Free screenings between February 20 and May 28 of the most successful films from the 16th Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. Eight films will be shown—including the winners and audience favorites—followed by discussions with the filmmakers, experts, journalists, and human rights activists.
The second film of the Re:Verzió series is the winner of the Hungarian Audience Award of the 16th Verzió Film Festival:
March 5, 2020, 6 p.m.
THE EUPHORIA OF BEING
Director: Réka Szabó
Hungary, 2019, 83 min, Hungarian with English subtitles
Religion through the lenses of the secret police
This exhibition is about the ways in which Communist totalitarian states through secret police operations “captured” religion in images, graphics, texts, and folders in order to control and eliminate those they deemed untrustworthy.
Free screenings between February 20 and May 28 of the most successful films from the 16th Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.
The traditional Spring film club of Verzió will bring you once more some of the most beloved films from the program of the latest festival edition. 8 films will be shown - including the winners and audience favorites - followed by discussions with the filmmakers, local experts, journalists, and human rights activists.
Venues: Blinken OSA Archive & Central European University
Free screenings between February 20 and May 28 of the most successful films from the 16th Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. 8 films will be shown - including the winners and audience favorites - followed by discussions with the filmmakers, experts, journalists, and human rights activists.
The first film is the winner of the International Audience Award and the opening film of the 16th Verzió Film Festival:
COLLECTIVE directed by Alexander Nanau, Romania, Luxembourg, 2019, 109 min
In Romanian and English with Hungarian and English subtitles
Similarly to previous years, OSA hosted the Budapest100 volunteer meeting. The voluntary researchers and organizers of the two-day festival are introduced to each other and their future tasks here, in the Goldberger House. Organized by the Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre, Budapest100 is a festival celebrating both the architectural heritage and the local communities of Budapest.
Exhibition in commemoration of László Rajk
December 13, 2019 – January 5, 2020
Opening Ceremony:December 13, 2019, 6 p.m.
Opening remarks by István Rév historian, György Jovánovics artist
“Tall men go upward; free men go outward, from the innate to what can be learned. They face three demons of inertia: what is down below, what is inside, and what is in chaos. László Rajk the man votes (ça va, ça va); László Rajk the artist makes a choice. Always against the demons of inertia, and always for freedom.” (Miklós Haraszti)
The Velvet Revolution of 1989
The year 1989 is a symbol of change. For a long 40 years Czechoslovakia, like other countries of Eastern European, lived under the rule of communism and especially the great-power influence of Moscow and the Soviet Union. 1989 brought the fall of this system. Czechoslovakia was one of the last countries where changes took place.
Venue: Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives
Address: 1051 Budapest Arany János u. 32.
The exhibition runs: November 20 - December 15, 2019.
Organized by the Prague National Museum; Czech Centrum, Budapest; The Slovak Institue, Budapest; the Slovak National Museum; The Blinken OSA Archives
Left Turn, Right Turn examines the social and political context of groups which, because of their artistic and political programs, were drawn either towards the left, or towards the right in their criticism of socialism as it actually existed.
exhibited artists
Members of the Orfeo and the Inconnu groups
and
Irina BOTEA BUCAN & Jon DEAN, LORÁNT Anikó
curated by NAGY Kristóf, SZARVAS Márton
graphic design KRISTÓF Krisztián
exhibition design KRISTÓF Krsiztián, LŐDI Virág
coordinated by SZÉKELY Katalin
Invitation to the launch of László Rajk's Book
Date: 21 November 2019, 6:00 p.m.
Venue: CEU Auditorium (15 Nádor Street, 1051 Budapest)
With: János Kis philosopher, János Rainer M. historian, Edit Sasvári art historian, Béla Tarr film director.
Moderated by András Mink
The event is in Hungarian.
Friday, November 15, 2019, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Impact through film – Human rights in focus
The 5th edition of Doc Lab, co-organized by Verzió and the CEU Visual Studies Platform, will mentor 9 projects in the frame of an intensive filmmaking workshop at CEU Mirabaud Lab from November 11th till 14th. Participants will receive guidance and mentorship in creating a trailer, a short film or documentary essay or in editing a scene or episode from a feature-length project in development. The Doc Lab films will be presented by the participants and the international team of tutors (Zsuzsanna Gellér-Varga, Moniek Wester Keegstra, Jeremy Braverman, Levente Pap) on November 15th at 16.30 at the Blinken OSA Archive.
Doc Lab films are subtitled and presented in English.