Press Room - 2017

The Open Society Foundations and the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives cordially invite you to the roundtable discussion

The Soviet Invasion and Its Aftermath: The Afghan Tragedy

DATE / Tuesday / June 20, 2017
TIME / 5:00 p.m.
PLACE / Blinken OSA Archívum, 1051 Budapest Arany János u. 32/ Research Room

Speakers:

András Mink, Historian (Blinken OSA)
Anthony Richter, Regional Director (MENASWA)
Orzala Ashraf Nemat,Director (Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit); senior teaching fellow (the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London)
Rangina Hamidi, founder and president of Kandahar Treasure
Ghizaal Haress, assistant professor (the American University of Afghanistan)
Almaz Saifutdinov ,the Chairman of the Board of the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation in Tajikistan
 
War has devastated much of Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion in 1979. The Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives are opening an exhibit that depicts the war from multiple perspectives, from the story of the Afghan communist movement to the anti-Soviet rebellion. The exhibit ends with the regaining of state sovereignty but the beginning of an even bloodier civil war, international incursion and present-day conflagration with the National Unity government controlling only slightly more than half the national territory. To open the exhibit, the Archives and Open Society Foundations are hosting a roundtable discussion on June 20th at 5pm to put Afghanistan’s history of conflict in a more contemporary context. Three prominent Afghan educators and civil society leaders will reflect on the Soviet invasion from their personal experiences as refugees as well as its consequences for the future of Afghanistan. Additionally, a representative from Tajikistan will speak to the war’s regional repercussions, both past and present.

Orzala Ashraf Nemat is Director of Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit and a political ethnographer and a senior teaching fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. With more than 16 years of experience in development practice, research, programmatic review, and academia, Dr. Nemat is a dedicated Afghan scholar and leader. Her doctoral thesis on Development Studies from SOAS focused on the role of international interventions in changing local governance relations in post-2001 Afghanistan. She is the founder of Humanitarian Assistance for Women and Children of Afghanistan (1999), was a guest scholar at Cher Michelson Institute (CMI) in Norway, and has worked with several international organisations such as the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and ICCO (Netherlands). Dr. Nemat has served on the governing boards of various national and international development organisations in Afghanistan and is currently a trustee of Afghanaid (UK). Dr. Nemat’s work is globally recognised by Amnesty International’s Italian Section (2000), and she was a Yale World Fellow (2008) and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (2009). Her work has been published on different aspects of Afghan women’s lives, and she is currently focusing on publishing chapters of her doctoral thesis in academic journals. Dr. Nemat occasionally writes Op Eds and blogs for The Guardian and Open Democracy, and is a frequent commentator on Afghanistan for the BBC World Service and Al Jazeera English news channels.

Rangina Hamidi, as the founder and president of Kandahar Treasure, the first women’s private social enterprise in Kandahar, Afghanistan, provides life changing economic opportunity for rural Afghan women, giving them a for profit platform for Kandahar’s unique embroidery work. Rangina is also most recently Principle of Al-Mizan private school in Kabul. As one of Kandahar’s leading voices for Afghan women, she has guided the development of groundbreaking networks for women, establishing pioneering women’s gatherings, social programs and activities for all women in Kandahar. Her work in Kandahar began when she returned to the country in 2003. She had escaped her native Afghanistan in 1981, at the age of four, during the Soviet occupation. Rangina moved first to Pakistan and then in 1988, settled in the United States with her family, receiving her education at the University of Virginia. Upon her return to Kandahar she served as manager of the Women’s Income Generation Project with Afghans for Civil Society, a grassroots organization dedicated to the social development of southern Afghanistan. Rangina has been internationally recognized for her work with women. She was selected as one of 18 finalists for the CNN 2007 Hero Award, and chosen as a “Personality of the Week” by Radio Free Europe in January 2008. She has been heard on numerous radio programs including NPR, the BBC and Voice of America and has been quoted in international publications including the TIMES Asia magazine, The Globe and Mail, Der Speigel, Business Week, The Guardian and Telegraph. She has served as a Council Member to US-Afghan Women’s Council since May 2015.

Ghizaal Haress is an assistant professor at the American University of Afghanistan, where she teaches constitutional law. Previously, she worked as the executive director for the Afghanistan Rural Enterprise Development Program, a national priority program for the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development from 2009 to 2013. She was the executive director for the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan during the first presidential elections in 2004, and helped strengthen election observation organizations for the 2005 parliamentary elections. She has also had leading positons in Global Rights Afghanistan and the National Democratic Institute. She has over a decade of experience working in law and development on the ground in Afghanistan in the areas of human rights, governance, economic rights/empowerment, supporting legal professionals, women’s political participation, strengthening political parties and election monitoring. Prof. Haress holds an LLM from the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, and an LLM from Kabul University.

Almaz Saifutdinov is the Chairman of the Board of the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation in Tajikistan. He joined OSIAF Tajikistan in 2012 as an expert of economic development program. Almaz works as the Economic/Commercial Advisor at the United States Embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. He maintains high profile government, public and private sector contacts in Tajikistan, with whom he discusses complex economic and commercial issues. In 2012 Almaz founded Economic News Tajikistan Group - one of the most active Facebook groups in the country. With almost 10 thousand readers the group serves as the primary source of information, news, analytical reports and discussion platform in Tajikistan. Almaz previously worked as the Deputy Head of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development in Tajikistan, where he worked on establishment one of the first cell phone operators in Tajikistan, and worked in process of setting up the Pamir Energy public-private partnership, which provides hydroelectric power to most of Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region and to bordering regions of Afghanistan.  He started his professional career in 1996, as the Deputy Chief and Small Scale privatization Project supported by USAID and the World Bank. He holds Master’s Degree in Development Administration from Western Michigan University, USA. He publishes (under a pen name) articles on economic, commercial issues.

June 14. 2017 6pm Blinken OSA Archivum

Salt for Svanetia / Dzim Svante / Sol’ Svanetii
Mikhail Kalatozov, USSR, 1930, 62 min, silent with Russian intertitles and English subtitles

Salt for Svanetia is a haunting portrait of a village in the remote, snowbound region of Caucasus, Svaneti. Celebrated for Mikhail Kalatozov’s masterful expressive camera work, the film instantly placed him alongside the great Soviet directors.

The screening is introduced by Dr. Oksana Sarkisova (Blinken OSA)
 
Free admission. Limited seats are available on a first come first served basis from 5.40 PM.
Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives / Research Room 1051 Budapest, Arany János utca 32.

RED AFRICA

Things Fall Apart

April 20 – June 4, 2017

Opening Remarks by
András Mink, Senior Research Fellow, Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives
Mark Nash, curator, film historian and filmmaker and Dr. Nadine Siegert, Deputy Director, Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth
The exhibition “Things Fall Apart” features artists, filmmakers and groups from across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Drawing on film, photography, propaganda, and public art, the exhibition presents interdisciplinary reflections on African connections to the Soviet Union and related countries.

Participating Artists: Burt Caesar, Filipa César, Onejoon Che, Ângela Ferreira, Yevgeniy Fiks, Isaac Julien, Alexander Markov, Jo Ractliffe, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu, Paulo Kapela, Milica Tomić, Tonel, Travelling Communiqué

Curated by Mark Nash
Research and Curatorial Assistant: Nadine Siegert
Project Manager: Will Strong (London), Nadine Siegert (Bayreuth), Paula Nascimento és / and João Rapazote (Lisszabon / Lisbon), Székely Katalin (Budapest)

Things Fall Apart is a cooperation between Calvert 22 Foundation, London; Iwalewahaus – Universität Bayreuth; EGEAC – Galerias Municipais and Africa.Cont, Lisbon; and the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, Budapest.

Public talk and presentation of a new film by Alexander Markov

Introduced and moderated by Oksana Sarkisova

 Found-footage Propaganda: Introduction to "Our Africa" Series

DATE: MAY 10, 2017, AT 6:00 P.M.
VENUE: BLINKEN OSA ARCHIVUM, ARANY JÁNOS UTCA 32.
1ST FLOOR, RESEARCH ROOM

Soviet documentaries of the 1960s responded to changing boundaries of ideological control during the so-called “Thaw” period. Many of the Soviet filmmakers worked and filmed in various “socialist-friendly” countries in Africa and their footage shows a genuine curiosity about the “otherness” of African reality. My film does not aim at duplicating the official propaganda discourse; my idea is to deepen the poignancy of Soviet newsreels and documentary films by exposing the propaganda clichés and by offering a new way of seeing them by exposing and highlighting their message. My review offers a fast-paced survey of the entire corpus of Soviet films about Africa in which I identify the most important and frequently  recurring themes and motifs. In the process of this research, I trace how Soviet views of Africa evolved over three decades, and later sank into oblivion.

Photofilm | New Ways of Thinking Film by Gustav Hamos

Date:
Wednesday, March 22, 2017 - 5:30pm

Photographs placed in a cinematic context create a filmic experience. In photofilms, the film medium is dissected into its components. Photofilm authors experiment with the relationship of text, sound and image, reflecting on the composition of the cinematographic. They let us “think” cinema. If a film image stops, the illusion of movement is shattered in that moment and irritation arises, we are invited to contemplate, interpret the image as a concept, participate in the author's study of images, and to be inspired by the imaginary extensions of meaning. Photofilms demand active, thinking viewers. Having photographs placed next to each other in a sequence provokes the viewer to search for connections and interpretations. Inspired by Roland Barthes' “The Third Meaning” it may be said that the future of the filmic is not strictly in movement, but rather in a third meaning, a framework for the unfolding of permutations that make a new theory of the photogram conceivable.

www.hamos.info /// www.potentialspace.de

SHOOTING THE REVOLUTION FILM SERIES

16 March 2017 at 6 PM

SOVIET PROPAGANDA ANIMATION 1

The first screening in a 2-part program of Soviet propaganda animation offers an insight into the ways of creatively packaging Bolshevik ideology, implemented with a variety of animation techniques. The work of early Soviet visual artists demonstrates how irony, satire, grotesque, caricature, and a streamlined language of political propaganda are put to the service of the new regime, ridiculing and threatening the world bourgeoisie, claiming the moral superiority over capitalism, mocking the vices of the imperial past, and envisioning a bright internationalist and interplanetary future. Nikolai Khodataev, Ivan Ivanov-Vano, Yuri Merkulov, Zenon Kimissarenko, Dziga Vertov, and others are among the pioneers of political animation, which foregrounded rather than masked its agitational message.

The screening is introduced by Dr. Oksana Sarkisova (Blinken OSA)

Free admission Limited seats are available on a first come first served basis.

Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives I 1051 Budapest, Arany János utca 32.

Kreatív workshop diákoknak

Csillagos ötös - A szocialista művészet jelképei // 2017.03. 10. és 13-án // Blinken OSA Archívum //

A program célja: A Blinken OSA Archívum A szocialista művészet jelképei című kiállításához kapcsolódó kreatív diákprogramot szervez, melynek célja a szocializmus jelképeinek feltérképezése, politikai és művészeti alkalmazásuknak a megismerése, valamint annak vizsgálata, hogy mit jelentenek e szimbólumok az új generációk számára.

A workshop kitűnő lehetőség a diákok történelmi és művészeti ismereteinek gazdagítására.

A végén mindenkinek kijár a csillagos ötös, ez a minimumJ

A foglalkozásokat vezetik:

Hemrik László, múzeumpedagógus

Dabi-Farkas Rita, képzőművész

Salgó Viktória, múzeumpedagógus

Szira Henrietta, képzőművész

……………

Időpontok:

Március 10. péntek 9:00 / 11:00 / 14:00 (2 órás blokkokban, csoportonként max. 30 fő)

Március 13. hétfő 9:00 / 11:00 / 14:00 (2 órás blokkokban, csoportonként max. 30 fő)

A limitált létszám miatt korai jelentkezés javasolt! Regisztráció érkezési sorrendben.

Kérjük, pontosan adják meg az iskola nevét, a létszámot, a kiválasztott időpontot és a tanár elérhetőségét (telefonszám).

A részvétel ingyenes. Jelentkezési határidő: 2017. március 7. kedd

Helyszín: OSA Archívum, 1051 Budapest, Arany János utca 32.

Bővebb információ és regisztráció: Kövecsi Anikó / +361 327-3250 / kovecsia@ceu.edu

www.osaarchivum.org

FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION

PATRIA NOSTRA - Minor Hungarian refugees in 1956 in the French Foreign Legion.

89 min. in Hungarian and French with English subtitles

28 February 2017

6:00 p.m.

The screening is accompanied by a discussion with the author and film director Béla Nóvé (Historian) and  András Mink, (Historian, Blinken OSA Archivum)


Blinken OSA Archivum / Galeria Centralis - 1051 Budapest, Arany János u. 32.

Free admission | Limited seats available on a first-come first-served basis



There were some 500 teenage Hungarians who fought against the Soviet tanks in 1956, and a few years later joined the French Foreign Legion – only to be sent to fight in the Algerian war. Thus they were involved in two of the most heated conflicts of the Cold War period, and both times they were on „the losing side”.
Very little is known about their subsequent fate. After a long search we were lucky enough to locate some survivers in Corsica and Provence. Since most of them were denied re-entry to their homeland – some until as late as 1990 –, they continued to serve in the Legion for 20 or 30 years in such far-away places as Algeria, Corsica, Madagascar, Tahiti, Chad, Djibouti and French Guiana.
No wonder that they are still fighting now – at least in their hearts – , feeling obliged to redefine their loyalty to their native land (Hungary) and their host country (France). And of course to the Legion itself, which offered them a sort of ’asylum’ or ’homeland’ for so many years. The motto says it all: ’Légion Patria Nostra’.

SHOOTING THE REVOLUTION FILM SERIES

22 February 2017

6:30 pm

Dziga Vertov, A Sixth Part of the World (1926)

73 min

In Russian with English subtitles

The screening is introduced by Dr. Oksana Sarkisova (Blinken OSA)

Free admission | Limited seats are available on a first-come first-served basis

Dziga Vertov, A Sixth Part of the World (1926)

73 min

Vertov’s spatially most ambitious film, A Sixth Part of the World was commissioned by the State Trade monopoly, but turned out to be far more than a mere run-of-the-mill promotion film. This cine-race across the Soviet universe stretches eastwards, northwards, and southwards and creates a highly ambiguous image of a “union of borderlands.” The film is both a visual experiment with ways of representing a new form of supra-ethnic unity and a novel form of travelogue. It earned Vertov not only high praise as a “cine-poet” but also vilification as an “exoticism-hunter.”  Sixth Part of the World unfolds in six loosely connected parts, each with a different focus. Its pioneering structure and visual language ensured heightened attention to the film at the time of its release – as well as a short distribution life. It was called at once monumental, epic, and a lyrical vision of the Soviet Union.