Black Box

From Monoskop
(Redirected from Fekete Doboz)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The Black Box [Fekete Doboz] video workshop was founded by Judit Ember, Márta Elbert, István Jávor, András Lányi and Gábor Vági in 1987. The documentary video journal produced its samizdat publications on VHS. As a civil organization they followed the events of the regime change and the National Round Table Negotiations.

Before the regime change, Black Box was an active participant and documenter of political, social and cultural events in Hungary. Black Box gave publicity to events and people silenced by the state-controlled media: the producers of samizdat publications, the organisers and participants of commemorations of the 1956 revolution and demonstrations against the communist dictatorship, the social and political changes, the demands for national independence.

The Black Box crew recorded on VHS and S-VHS cassettes, which were then modern and accessible to civilians, the events that took place in private homes, underground venues, bars, cinemas, theatres and streets. The nearly 4,000 hours of video documentary footage recorded between 1988 and 1996 is Hungary's largest and most significant private video archive of the regime change, available to researchers at the Blinken OSA Archive. The editors of the Black Box made documentaries from the footage, which were reproduced and distributed on VHS cassettes. These were the so-called video transcripts, containing a main film and an appendix.

The Black Box's fame was established by the documentary film A 301-es parcella [Plot #301], which reports on the inauguration of the monument to Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris on 16 June 1988, designed by László Rajk, and the Budapest commemoration that escalated into an anti-regime mass demonstration on the same day, brutally suppressed by the police. In this film, we see for the first time interviews with 1956 revolutionaries, family members of the executed martyrs and representatives of the political opposition.

Their most important documentary films are about the formation of the Young Democrats (Fidesz) (Civil technikák [Civil Techniques], 1988), the mass protests against the Bős-Nagymaros water pipeline (A műtárgy [The Facility], 1988) and the film Még kér a nép [The People Still Want More] (1989) about the political demonstrations that were not allowed. The film following the exhumation of Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs, executed in 1958 for their participation in the 1956 revolution (Újmagyar siralom, 1989) helps to process the collective historical trauma, while Az ellenzéki kerekasztal története I–V. [The History of the Opposition Roundtable, Parts I-V] (1989) documents the peaceful transfer of power and the series of negotiations that laid the foundations for Hungary's transition from communist dictatorship to multi-party democracy.

After the regime change in 1990, the Black Box increasingly turned its attention to social groups on the periphery of Hungarian society, especially the homeless, people with mental health problems and Roma communities.

Fekete Doboz was awarded the Pulitzer Memorial Prize in 1993, and has received a number of other prizes. [1]

Editions[edit]

  • Civil technikák. Fidesz [Civil Techniques. Fidesz], 1988, 71 min. A chronicle of the establishment of the Alliance of Young Democrats. The film follows young politicians (Viktor Orbán, Gábor Fodor, László Kövér, Péter Molnár, József Szájer, Tamás Deutsch), the founders of a new, independent political organization. [2]
  • A Műtárgy [The Facility], 1988, 68 min. This documentary film follows the mass protests against the construction of the Gabčíkovo–Nagymaros dams on the Danube in 1988. [3]
  • A 301-es parcella [Plot #301], 1988, 57 min. 16 June 1988, on the 30th anniversary of the execution of Imre Nagy and other martyrs of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, a monument was unveiled in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris to honor the victims. On the same day, a commemoration was held in Budapest by the unmarked graves in Plot #301 at Rákoskeresztúr cemetery. The commemoration turned into an anti-dictatorship demonstration which continued at the Batthyány eternal flame and on Heroes' Square. Relatives of the victims and '56 revolutionaries remember 1956 and talk about what this day means to them.
  • Még kér a nép [The People Demand], 1989, 52 min. On 23 October 1988 hundreds of people demonstrated on the 32nd anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, demanding freedom and democracy despite the attacks on demonstrators by police squads. 4 November 1988 the ex-members of the secret police and workers militia celebrated the “suppression of the counter-revolution" on Köztársaság Square. 6 months later, 15 March 1989 already tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in the streets of Budapest and openly demanded democracy, and speeches were delivered by opposition leaders János Kis, Viktor Orbán, Dénes Csengey and others. [4]

more

On Black Box[edit]

  • Morgan Russel, "Black Box", Whole Earth Review 68, Sausalito, 1990, p 124.
  • Black Box, "About Ourselves (1990)", in The Next Five Minutes Zapbook, eds. Amsterdam Cultural Studies, Amsterdam: Paradiso, 1992, p 55.
  • Marianna Padi, "Black Box", in The Next Five Minutes Zapbook, eds. Amsterdam Cultural Studies, Amsterdam: Paradiso, 1992, pp 56-57.
  • Márta Elbert, Kiskamerás történetek: közügyek és magánügyek [Through the Lens of a Small Camera: Public and Private Issues], Budapest: Gabbiano Print, 2018. Book launch, video. (Hungarian)

Links[edit]

Retrieved from "https://monoskop.org/index.php?title=Black_Box&oldid=137775"