Press Room

Verzió call for submissions
Posted: 20/February/2022
The 19th Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival will be held November 8–16, 2022, in art cinemas in Budapest and in cities across Hungary. Applicants can submit their documentary films until May 31, 2022. The films would fall into one of three categories: International, Student & Debut Film, or the Hungarian Competition, while addressing the latest human rights and social issues. Submissions can be entered free of charge.
 
Records Uncovered 2.0 Photo: Dániel Végel
Posted: 15/February/2022
Records Uncovered 2.0: LGBTQI+ histories in Central and Southeastern Europe – Exhibition This is the last week of the exhibition and the related programs, you can still register for the events!
 
Records Uncovered 2.0 Exhibition
Posted: 08/February/2022
Related Events - Records Uncovered 2.0: LGBTQI+ histories in Central and Southeastern Europe - Exhibition Attention: Visiting Blinken OSA is allowed only with a valid COVID-19 vaccination certificate. When you arrive, wear a mask and keep your distance. Event registration is a must for visitors. Blinken OSA Archívum / Centrális Galéria Arany János u. 32, 1051 Budapest Tuesday–Sunday: 10:00 a.m.– 6:00 p.m.
 
Screenshot of the online catalog with new functions
Posted: 08/February/2022
Blinken OSA is happy to announce a new filter in the search function of the Archival Catalog, making it easier for researchers to monitor and assess the information regarding the availability of records.
 
Photo Blaumann Edit - repository
Posted: 08/February/2022
Blinken OSA is happy to announce that three new archival series of the sub-fond Western Press Archives have recently been introduced to the online catalog, and are available for research in the Archives’s Research Room!
 
The street name sign in District 2.
Posted: 02/February/2022
On the 25th anniversary of Ottilia Solt’s death (1944–1997) a square was named after her in District 2 of Budapest, not far from her former apartment on Komjádi Béla Street, as a result of a community decision-making process. The street name sign was unveiled on February 1, 2022, at a formerly unnamed public square, situated at the corner of Frankel Leó Street and Harcsa Street.  
 
Out in East Berlin - Lesbians & Gays in the GDR
Posted: 31/January/2022
In 2022, the Háttér Society is organizing LGBT History Month for the tenth time. On the occasion of the milestone anniversary, we present, together with Blinken OSA, the exhibition Records Uncovered 2.0: LGBTQI+ histories in Central and Southeastern Europe. In connection with the theme, we will screen the documentary Out in East Berlin - Lesbians & Gays in the GDR, which will be introduced by one of the directors, Jochen Hick.
 
Project photo - Litera.hu and Blinken OSA Archives Call
Posted: 28/January/2022
The Blinken OSA Archives and the Litera portal issued a joint open and restricted literary call in November 2021 titled The Story of My Cowardice. The call is posted on the website of Litera. The deadline for submissions is February 7, 2022, which is approaching fast, but we are happy to announce that quite a few short stories have been submitted already,  which are available on the public Facebook Page titled The story of my cowardice.
 
Mihály Csákó
Posted: 19/January/2022
On January 10, 2022, on the third anniversary of the death of Mihály Csákó, the John Wesley Theological College’s Pedlabor workshop organized a commemorative conference, where his former colleagues and friends remembered one of the founders of the Hungarian sociology of education, a renowned researcher of political sociology.
 
Records Uncovered 2.0
Posted: 18/January/2022
Records Uncovered 2.0: LGBTQI+ histories in Central and Southeastern Europe January 19 – February 20, 2022 On January 18, 2022, the exhibition Records Uncovered 2.0, organized by Blinken OSA and Háttér Archive and Library, has opened at the Galeria Centralis, presenting LGBTQI+ histories of Central and Southeastern Europe from the post-WWII period to the early 2000s. The exhibition will be accompanied by film screenings, roundtable discussions, and other related events.
 
HIPS course at Blinken OSA Research Room
Posted: 14/January/2022
Blinken OSA, with the professors and the students of the Freeszfe Association, has launched a joint project titled fearless speech in the first semester of the 2021/22 academic year. The program series includes seminars and lectures, as well as a literary competition, an exhibition, film screenings, and theater performances. The program series continues with the History in Public Sphere (HIPS) internship course titled Fearless Speech and its fate in the archives. This internship is part of the HIPS initiative seeking to offer courses that “focuses on the ways the past is represented, contested, and negotiated in the public sphere, exploring various contexts from the early Modern period to the present in a comparative and transnational way.” HIPS is a CEU Erasmus Mundus program, students join the program from all over the world (e.g., from the Philippines, India, Latin America, and the US), providing the Archives an excellent opportunity for wider recognition. Thus, the Blinken OSA collections get problematized and researched at a global scale. According to Blinken OSA Research Fellow Ioana Macrea-Toma, “theoretical lectures and hands-on archival research work will help future public historians to further understand the logic and epistemic assumptions of Cold War data collections, and to translate issues having a Central and Eastern European relevance to larger global frameworks."
 
AEHR course participants in the research room, 2017
Posted: 11/January/2022
The faculty members of Blinken OSA have launched the Archives, Evidence and Human Rights (AEHR) course in the 2021/22 winter semester for CEU students for the 20th time. Offered continuously, the oldest element in the education portfolio of Blinken OSA was initiated in 2002 under the aegis of the Department of Legal Studies at CEU, but over the years many students from other departments joined as well. Since 2012, the course is announced at the Department of History as well, thus enriching the course’s workshops and discussions culturally and from the perspective of its disciplinary approach.
 
Source Wikipedia
Posted: 22/December/2021
The program series fearless speech, a joint project of Blinken OSA and the professors and students of the Freeszfe Association, which was launched in the first semester of the 2021/2022 academic year, recently announced a call for proposals for Freeszfe members to create theater performances in the framework of the project.
 
Program design
Posted: 16/December/2021
Since the Archives took up the responsible task of reflecting on the current distortions in history teaching in Hungary with a very successful free accredited teachers’ training course, five years have passed. Soon after the expiry of the accreditation, there are plans to launch a new course in a different structure and with different content.
 
The banner of Hungarian Spectrum
Posted: 09/December/2021
It is with great sadness that we learnt about Eva S. Balogh’s passing a few days ago. The announcement was made on Hungarian Spectrum, the blog Ms. Balogh dedicated to “reflections on politics, economics, and culture” in Hungary from June 2007 up until her sudden death on November 30, 2021. A highly important, erudite, and critical voice among the few daily sources of information about Hungary in English, Hungarian Spectrum had over 7,000 subscribers (as of November 2021), with numerous journalists, politicians, diplomats, and scholars among them. 
 
The logo of the ASEEES
Posted: 08/December/2021
The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) Virtual Convention took place on December 1–3, featuring over 400 sessions. This is the most important annual event of the Association, usually held in the fall in a different North American city each year. The ASEEES annual convention is an international forum of experts allowing the broad exchange of ideas and information, a platform that stimulates further work and synergies of the field. Like in previous years, Blinken OSA colleagues participated in the Convention and presented papers, organized panels, and chaired discussions. The Convention provided a relevant professional platform for them to introduce the Blinken OSA archival holdings and its research potential.  
 
Stock photo of the Vienna workshop
Posted: 07/December/2021
On November 17–19, 2021, a workshop devoted to formerly hidden or inaccessible Jewish archival collections and documents took place at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI). Entitled Precarious Archives, Precarious Voices. Expanding Jewish Narratives from the Margins , the workshop informed on how the archival turn, the opening of archives in Eastern Europe, and the new digital availability of smaller archival collections contributed to reanalyzing old narratives, or examining narratives marginalized until now. The workshop sought to feature voices that have been unheard until now, and discuss new methodological lenses demanded by such recently discovered archival material on Jewish histories.
 
CEU-OSUN call for applications - 2021
Posted: 03/December/2021
Call for Applications: CEU Budapest-OSUN Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships We are happy to announce that a new fellowship will provide an opportunity for doctoral students and junior scholars to spend time at Blinken OSA. The CEU Budapest-OSUN Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowship provides an opportunity for up to eight doctoral students and six junior scholars within 7 years of their Ph.D. defense to spend time either at the CEU Democracy Institute (DI) or at the Archives. The future doctoral applicants need to be affiliated with an OSUN Institution when they apply, which is not the requirement with the post-doctoral scholars.
 
Photo by Edit Blaumann/Budapest100
Posted: 30/November/2021
As the board of the Visegrad Fund is assessing the second round of the new applications for the successful 2021–2022 calls for the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA, let us highlight the work of the winners of the previous call. The Visegrad Scholarship at OSA was launched to invite researchers, scholars, artists, journalists to do research at Blinken OSA, covering their Budapest stay and travel. The theme of the scholarship varies from year to year, the latest call titled Possibilities of Knowing: Truth Seeking in a Polarized World and [in] Its Aftermath invites applicants from the fields of history, the arts, philosophy, and sociology, to reflect on the conditions of knowledge production during and after the Cold War. Successful applicants spend a period of eight weeks studying related documents, analyzing them, and at the end of their scholarship, they would all be required to give a short lecture with the end results of their research at the Archives.
 
Memorial
Posted: 25/November/2021
An archives and museum preserving the memory of the political victims of the Soviet Union and especially of the Gulag, and at the same time a human rights group documenting and protesting human rights violations to this day, Memorial is facing false accusations.
 
Verzió joins Places to B
Posted: 24/November/2021
The Verzió International Human Rights Film Festival ended last weekend with physical screenings in Budapest, Pécs, Debrecen, Kecskemét, Szeged, and Szombathely, as well as a countrywide online viewing, all in all attracting around 20,000 viewers. The festival is over, but the work continues; we are happy to share the good news that a new international network was launched and Verzió is among the founding partners. Verzió International Human Rights Film Festival (Budapest, Hungary), Fipadoc International Documentary Film Festival (Biarritz, France), and Biografilm festival (Bologna, Italy) are launching a new network, Places to B – Biarritz, Bologna, Budapest. The three festivals, all with female leadership, share an interest in contemporary European creative documentary films, and are committed to managing their activities transparently and to support each other in producing sustainable and diverse international film festival events.
 
Vintage closed sign by Miguel Montejano
Posted: 17/November/2021
Dear Researchers and Visitors, By the decision of the Management of the Blinken OSA Archives, our building will be closed till Thursday morning, November 18, 2021. due to Covid-19 related reasons   Thank you for your understanding!
 
#OSAisCEU
Posted: 17/November/2021
Explore Blinken OSA‘s history through selected milestones in archival processing and development, exhibitions and conferences, academic and public education programs on osaisceu.osaarchivum.org!
 
Photo: Zoltán Adrián, Jennifer Varga
Posted: 12/November/2021
How can online or offline media or NGOs communicate without fear? How and where can an NGO’s case reach the media dedicated to the freedom of press? Do they aim to express mutually reinforcing topics? During the roundtable discussion, communication experts from NGOs and editors of online platforms will exchange their experiences in conveying a message that will strengthen democracy. Do they apply self-censorship, and if so, why and how? This discussion is both an exchange of experiences and request for assistance wherein representatives of NGOs, journalists, and editors are all welcome to participate.
 
Verzió 18
Posted: 08/November/2021
The 18th VERZIÓ International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, founded by Blinken OSA Archives, has the longest history among documentary film festivals in Hungary, and has been held every November since 2004. This year the film festival showcases 64 films from 35 countries, in cinemas on 9–14 November, and online, 15–21 November. These documentaries bring us closer to current human rights issues, such as humans’ impact on the environment, ways to overcome physical-emotional trauma, young people striving for a better future, and stories from journalists, teenagers and activists who are challenging power and rigid systems.
 
CEU students at Blinken OSA
Posted: 03/November/2021
On October 30, 2021, Blinken OSA welcomed students of CEU’s History Department and the interuniversity program History in the Public Sphere (HIPS) at the Archives. Since CEU’s forced move to Vienna and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Archives has come up with innovative methods to reach future researchers by digitizing its holdings and providing researchers with remote access. Among these researchers is the student body of CEU.
 
Verzió 18- Alternative Film Poster Exhibition
Posted: 26/October/2021
The 18th VERZIÓ International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, founded by Blinken OSA, has its regular spin-off event, the alternative film poster exhibition, organized at the Archives. For the fourth year, the Budapest Metropolitan University’s (METU) graphic design MA students exhibit their works in cooperation with Verzió Film Festival. The group exhibition is part of the festival's UniVerzió initiative, which invites university students to dive into the world of documentary films through both practical and theoretical exercises during the fall semester. Opening: October 29, 6 p.m. Address: Blinken OSA, 1051 Budapest, Arany János u. 32.
 
Photo by Dániel Végel
Posted: 19/October/2021
On the 10th anniversary of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA, a three-day workshop titled Methodologies of Working in Cold War Archives was organized with the active participation of our archival staff and invited guests: academics, historians, sociologists, researchers, archivists, and digital specialists. It was a professionally charged three days for participants with intense discussions, vibrant presentations, and bright and engaging Q&As. Ioana Macrea-Toma, the organizer of this workshop, reflects on the professional event.
 
https:/august91.spb.ru/
Posted: 14/October/2021
Archival documents from the collection of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute held at Blinken OSA contributed to documented evidence published within the new interactive public history project on 1991 August Coup in Leningrad and Moscow. The online portal Leningrad. August. Freedom was launched for the 30th anniversary of the 1991 Soviet coup d’état attempt.
 
Portugal, Salvaterra de Magos, RFE Transmitting station (Fortepan)
Posted: 30/September/2021
On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA, we are organizing a workshop titled Methodologies of Working in Cold War Archives. Facts, Values and Archival Ecologies. The workshop will be in a hybrid format, both on-site and online. The workshop will be organized at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest, on October 14–16, 2021.