Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives
Press Room
OSA is the project leader of Europeana 1989 in Hungary. During the Hungarian collection campaigns, it cooperated with the SZTE Klebelsberg Library of the University of Szeged and the Museum of Sopron. The last collection campaing will take place at OSA on the 5th and 6th of September, 2014.
The three meters by three meters art piece, QR code, which consists of 2.916 slides, will be permanently exhibited in the OSA Archivum's Goldberger House in Budapest. OSA is one of the internationally most well known archives of the recent past, displaying documents on historical events and eras in unusual ways. It is eminently suited, both spatially and spiritually, to display this work of art.
OSA Archivum's Yellow-Star Houses project culminates on June 21, 1944, the 70th anniversary of the forced mass relocation of 220,000 Budapest Jews
into around 2,000 designated buildings marked with a yellow Star of David: the "yellow-star houses."
The book launch of The Milosevic Trial: An Autopsy by Timothy Williams Waters. This is the first cross-disciplinary examination of the longest, most controversial war crimes trial of the modern era, and its contested legacy for the growing fields of international criminal law and post-conflict justice.
Europeana 1989 (www.europeana1989.eu) is a project of the Europeana Digital Library which aims at creating a unique European public archive of the political changes of 1989. It is set to gather digital content from its users through a variety of methods, including collection campaigns and online participation. Relevant documents and objects, along with accompanying stories, are uploaded to a website and pinned to an interactive map.
Meeting to introduce ourselves, discuss our experiences to date, and share ideas and plans with one another.
Filmed over more than 20 years by multiple generations of the same family, this intimate portrait shows the lives of three generations in exile in the Ain el-Helweh camp. Imbued with nostalgia and striking a wide range of emotional notes, A World Not Ours is more than a family portrait: it is a sensitive and illuminating study of belonging and friendship.
International Conference
March 7-8, 2014 at the Open Society Archives, Budapest.
The conference was organized by OSA Archivum to bridge the gap between contemporary digital archival practices and academic theory regarding the image of—and the images in—the archive. The Conference organizers, Ioana Macrea-Toma and Oksana Sarkisova, started from a presumption that the potential of new technologies can be best understood by studying the historicity of visual practices and historical imaginations. Given the growing role of visual material in both researching and presenting historical data, the event brought together scholars and specialists in the fields of history, archival science, media studies, film studies, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and design, and proved to be a successful interdisciplinary event.
Marc Wiese's documentary is both a powerful story of survival and an evocative character study, showing the feelings of guilt, anger, remorse and complicity that are shared between both abused and abuser. With extremely rare footage taken inside a prison camp, Camp 14 is a once-seen, never forgotten experience.
Join us at OSA on Wednesday, March 19 for a live streaming of a one-day conference held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "The Holocaust in Hungary, 70 Years Later." Attendance is free.
Ryuichi runs a small Japanese company, "I Want To Cheer You Up Ltd." – from his cell phone and laptop. Ryuichi and his employees are professional stand-ins, part of a growing service industry in Japan that rents out fake spouses, best men, relatives, friends, colleagues, boyfriends and girlfriends, all to spare their clients’ embarrassment at social functions such as weddings, funerals, or other family gatherings.
Filmed over six years, In The Shadow Of The Sun tells the story of two albino men as they attempt to follow their dreams in the face of prejudice and fear in Tanzania.
As part of our debate and film screenings series The Reactive Citizen, launched to address the planned expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant in central Hungary, OSA is screening the film The Radiant by The Otolith Group.
The Act of Killing is a journey into the memories and imaginations of the perpetrators, offering an insight into the minds of mass killers. It is a nightmarish vision of a frighteningly banal culture of impunity in which killers can joke about crimes against humanity on television chat shows, and celebrate moral disaster with the ease and grace of a soft shoe dance number.
The conference aims to bridge the gap between contemporary digital archival practices and academic theory regarding the image of and the image in the archive.