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Paranoia Recycling Archive

The objective of the project is to capacitate research by carrying out the digitalization of a series of training films on ABC (atomic, biological, chemical) warfare, all of which were produced in Hungary throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Access to this collection is substantial to the understanding of the Cold War, a period of mutual paranoia in world history, when every single event was a reaction to fears inspired by the "enemy". It is impossible to make sense of current notions concerning nuclear energy without making sense of the suspicions about nuclear power. These films made for the Civil Defense Alliance, whose task was to educate the public in ways of protecting themselves against weapons of mass destruction, largely added to the increased suspicion about the "other". Made between 1961 and 1973 by the Military and Sport Film Studio for the Civil Defense Alliance, the film series of nearly one hundred pieces was one of the main features in this campaign. This series constitutes one of the most important relics in Hungarian cultural history from the period of the Cold War. The American and Western-European countries have been processing their nuclear anti-propaganda materials for several decades, while the same work has either not started, or is hardly under way, in Hungary and in Central Eastern Europe because of the unavailability of the archive materials. This project could now jump-start that process. And through OSA/CEU, the Hungarian example could easily inspire similar initiatives in the other countries of the region and help us get closer to a veryfiable explanation of events shaping and framing the history of countries in the region as well as on the European continent.

PROJECT OBJECTIVE

After being dubbed into English, the digitalized material will replace the indexing system of an analog video library in a way that meets the challenges of the modern times, through a medium known as hypervideo. Research is done here through tagged surfaces. The use of various tags will make research both simpler and more effective. Along with the CEU archive, the Paranoia Recycling Archive will be accessible through the Internet for anyone throughout the world.

“This project has been supported by the ERSTE Foundation”
http://www.erstestiftung.org/