February 16, 2023: Visegrad and CEU Budapest – OSUN Fellows’ Presentations at Blinken OSA Archivum

I Used to be the Mayor (Alexander Sussmann)


We are happy to announce the next presentations of the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA and the CEU Budapest – OSUN Postdoctoral and Doctoral Fellowships. Join the event online following the link below!

The presentation will be held at 11:00 am on Thursday, February 16, 2023, online. The Zoom link of the meeting is: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/94317988664?pwd=alpqd1R6WnJJL2lxYnNVTS9KM2pkdz09

Agnė Rimkutė, CEU Budapest – OSUN Postdoctoral Fellow at Blinken OSA Archivum
“The viewer is always right!”: Late-Socialist Cinema Audiences Between Propaganda and Consumption

Recent histories of Soviet cultural production have provided valuable insights into ideological and institutional contradictions defining the limits of the Soviet propaganda state. However, a comprehensive view of the successes and failures of the Soviet ideological project requires a close consideration of cultural consumption and the very audiences that the Soviet cultural project sought to educate and transform. Seeking to elucidate this area of Soviet cultural life, I will delve into one of the most lively spaces of cultural consumption during the long 1960s: cinema. The case of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic will serve as a laboratory for exploring how contemporary cinemagoing was shaped by the complex links between institutional frameworks, economic incentives, and contemporary advances in Socialist consumption culture. In this way, the presentation will shed light on two competing—and often conflicting—contemporary approaches to cinema audiences: the viewer as a Soviet citizen subjected to education and persuasion through cinematic experience, and the viewer as a cultural consumer whose preferences had to be acknowledged and accommodated.

Alexander Sussmann, Independent Filmmaker, Visegrad Scholarship at OSA
I Used to be the Mayor – Documentary

I Used to be the Mayor is an intimate documentary portrait of the former mayor of Budapest. Gábor Demszky was a taxi driver turned writer, who in the 1980s became a leading voice in the underground opposition to Hungary’s totalitarian regime. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he became the first elected Mayor of Budapest—and over the course of 20 years, he helped transform his country into a vibrant liberal democracy. Today, power is in the hands of Viktor Orbán. No opposition voices are tolerated. Gábor’s triumphs are long forgotten. At the age of 70, he struggles with the anonymity outside the political spotlight and is taking stock of the price he’s paid—personally and reputationally—for his place in Hungary’s history. But what does the future hold for him and the country that shaped his life? This presentation will focus on the current state of the development of the film with a special focus on the archive research at Blinken OSA Archivum.