Press Room - 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. 

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

New call – VISEGRAD SCHOLARSHIP AT OSA! Research theme within the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA in 2021/22 Possibilities of knowing: Truth-seeking in a polarized world and [in] its aftermath We are happy to announce the call for the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA in 2021/22! Submission deadline: November 15, 2021 Who can apply? We invite 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. Scholars, artists, journalists, and filmmakers are invited to analyze the documentary practices of different agencies and persons on both sides of the Iron Curtain and assess the truth value of related documents/artifacts. The call wishes to promote exchanges among people with backgrounds in arts, humanities, and social sciences.

The Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives (Blinken OSA) at Central European University organizes a seminar on fearless speech. This seminar is part of a longer event series on fearless speech co-organized by Blinken OSA and the students and lecturers of Freeszfe. The seminar will start at the beginning of October and is open to all Hungarian university and college students, including Freeszfe. Location: Blinken OSA, Arany János u. 32., 1051 Budapest, Hungary Maximum number of participants: 15 Application requirement: university student status Application deadline: October 6, 2021 The seminar is led by István Rév and András Mink. Details and application (in Hungarian)

On September 24, 2021, Blinken OSA hosted the Swedish Academy member, prominent writer and former investigative journalist Ingrid Carlberg, who was staying in Budapest at the invitation of the Swedish Embassy. Guests also included Katarina Szécsi Åsbrink (Counsellor, Deputy Head of Mission), Andreas Attorps (Economic Policy and Trade Officer), and László Upor (former Rector-Elect of SZFE, currently the member of the Freeszfe Association).

Research theme within the Visegrad Scholarship at OSA in 2021/22 Possibilities of Knowing: Truth Seeking in a Polarized World and [in] its Aftermath Another half-year has passed, and now we are happy to announce a new round of Visegrad Scholarship candidates who will soon begin their research at Blinken OSA. The evaluation of the last submitted Visegrad Scholarship applications has finished and the final list of winners with full support and partial support has been approved by the Council of Ambassadors. This scholarship call invited applicants from the fields of history, the arts, philosophy, and sociology. They are expected to reflect on the conditions of knowledge production during and after the Cold War, and expose the intellectual and professional practices (journalistic, sociological, artistic, political, archival) that both reflected and shaped the meaning and scope of the Cold War phenomenon. Visegrad Scholarship @ OSA – July 2021

This weekend the festival of the Budapest buildings continues with houses built or redesigned in 1921–1930 and 1945–1957. Budapest100 is a spring weekend festival celebrating the buildings and people around us. The event was launched in 2011 by Blinken OSA and the KÉK Contemporary Architecture Centre to celebrate the 100-year-old houses of the city. This year, due to the pandemic, the festival has been postponed to September. For detailed information: http://budapest100.hu/en/

Sergey Kovalev began his career as a biophysicist and was a top leading scientist, before he became one of the most famous human rights defenders in the former USSR. In the late 1960s, he was fired from his position for setting up the Action Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR in 1969. He regularly published in the samizdat publication titled Chronicle of Current Events, writing about labor camps or the arrests and psychiatric confinements of the opponents of the regime. In 1974, he was accused of spreading “anti-Soviet propaganda,” was arrested and sentenced to seven years in the Gulag, followed by three years of internal exile in the far-east and Kolyma. The reforms by Mikhael Gorbachev allowed him to return to Moscow in 1987. During perestroika, he resumed his activism, and participated in the founding of several key humanitarian organizations and initiatives, among them Memorial, a human rights society dedicated to the memory and rehabilitation of victims of political repression in the USSR.