There is hardly a better person to present the Hungarian Culture Weeks initiatives than the Director of the Hungarian Cultural Institute and adviser at the Embassy of the Republic of Hungary Dr. György Szondi. The big friend of Bulgaria, whose mandate, to our regret, is already expiring, spoke about the many Hungarian events highlighting these weeks – a culmination of his activities in our country.

The ethnojazz concert of the Hungarian band Balkan Syndicate

Why in May?
The accent is in May but, actually, the Hungarian Culture Weeks started in April and in June there will be more events to follow. May is an important month for your culture – with the 24th of May celebrations, with the Salon Des Arts, with the Ninth Festival of European Co-productions, with the Muppet Fair, events, in all of which we were able to participate. What is more, on May 1, 2004, Hungary became a member of the European Union and the May events were organized as a gesture, as a way to commemorate the date. The third reason, which is a bit a personal, is that I had the chance and the support of the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage, which this year allocated funds for the Weeks of Hungarian Culture, turning them into a kind of a swan song of György Szondi, whose mandate as Director of the Hungarian Cultural Institute is already coming to its end. This was a way to bid adieu to my friends in Bulgaria.

The concept?
Organizing as many joint events as possible. A concert of three Hungarian and three Bulgarian jazzmen was held. A wonderful exhibition was put up in the Central Bath House, entitled “Furnishing of the women’s pool” and showcasing the works of four Hungarian and four Bulgarian artists. This joint character was also present in Norah Levai and Tzetza Georgieva’s exhibition in the Hungarian Cultural Institute. Bulgarian scientists participated in the Bulgarian-Hungarian Genealogical Conference; its guest was the Chair of the Hungarian Genealogists’ Association. We showed Hungarian films within a space of three weeks and presented as an introduction to the event the wonderful book of Vera Naydenova, the best expert on Hungarian film art, “The Hungarian Cinema 1968–2004... A critic’s diary”, in which she had complied her articles.

The accent is the music
During the current Weeks of Hungarian Culture, music and fine arts were represented more than any other time with large ensembles and impressive exhibitions. There were a lot of book premieres, Hungarian cinema weeks and scientific conferences during my mandate. But we have never had such a concentration before – five exhibitions and five concerts!

Speaking about music, I must admit my aspirations were to show it in a different way. During the concert on May 11, 2004, organized by the embassies of five of the ten new EU members on the occasion of their European accession, guest was the Hungarian Balint Zsoldos. Tamas Hacki, an incredible virtuoso, who produces music with his mouth, also came to Bulgaria. He lives in Germany and rarely gives concerts. His guest performance with his Ex Antiquis group is a rare thing to see and his numbers are phenomenal. Not long ago, the Balkan Syndicate group had a concert in Sozopol and it was than that I promised to Nikola Parov, a world famous musician (whose father is a Bulgarian and his mother – Hungarian), to present before the Sofia audience his formation, and the Bulgarians also fell in love with it. We purposely selected and invited the “Korai Jorom” rock band because it includes two Bulgarians as its members, it is known with its unique and impulsive music, it has already had concerts in Bulgaria and we knew the Bulgarian audience liked it. I already mentioned the concert of Bulgarian and Hungarian jazzmen in the National Palace of Culture. The folklore dance ensemble “Ordasok”, consisting of four musicians and five dancers wonderfully presented the folklore richness of Transylvania and more specifically of the Kalotaseg region.

I stop here to mention that presenting Hungarian culture means presenting the culture of the Hungarians both in and outside the country, as well as the culture of the Hungarian ethnic minorities. This is my leading motive. That is why we invited 11 masters of old crafts from the Szekelyudvarhely region (Transylvania), who showed on-site their crafts to the Bulgarian public. The Malko Teatro theatre is a theatre of the Bulgarians living in Hungary. The troupe had two shows in Smolyan and in Sofia. There was a big exhibition of Roma art in the National Palace of Culture, showcasing 32 pictures and 10 sculptures of 14 Roma primitive artists from Hungary.

Impressive exhibitions
The exhibition of the Roma primitive artists was unique, because their art is a new type of phenomenon. It is worth mentioning that thanks to the responsiveness of the National Gallery for Foreign Art we were able to bring and showcase 26 big canvases of 18 contemporary artists. We were very happy that the fund of the gallery also showed canvases and small plastics of Hungarian artists. The exhibition provided a comprehensive picture of the directions in the development of Hungarian fine arts today.

In early June, together with the Slovak Embassy, we opened a “Mediaeval Frescoes in the Heart of Europe” documentary exhibition, showing frescoes from Northern Hungary and Southern Slovakia, dating back to the XIII–XV c. Another joint event, this time with the French Cultural Institute, was also realized – the exhibition of Andre Kertes, a Hungarian living and working in France, and one of the most significant figures in the history of photography. His original photographic works were shown in the winter garden of the National Art Gallery. All this was expressive of our will “to get out of the institute” and be in various places both in Sofia and in other cities.

There was a Hungarian participation in the conclusive exhibition of the Ichera pleinair – the paintings of the young Hungarian artist Ester Deli, we take great pride in. For the first time 25 big contemporary Hungarian artists were presented, each with one graphic on 25 classic Hungarian movies, shown on the occasion the centenary of the Hungarian cinema (1895-1995) in an exhibition entitled “Long Live the Cinema”.

The passion – books
The Hungarian Cultural Institute has been organizing book presentations throughout the year. During the Weeks of Hungarian Culture, the book of a young Hungarian novelist Attila Bartis The Calm was presented. He was born in Romania and he has been living in Hungary for already ten years. He came to Sofia specially for the premiere of his book, which was translated in Bulgarian by Martin Hristov. Unfortunately, the 2002 Nobel Prize laureate Imre Kertész was unable to attend the Sofia launch of his book Fateless (Sorstalanság). Last year the book was presented in Plovdiv, and this year a presentation was held in Sofia. The accent here was his second book, which has just come out of print in Bulgarian – Kaddish for a Child not Born (Kaddis a meg nem születetett gyermekért). May was the month of five book premieres. There were book premieres in the beginning of June. We witnessed an interesting phenomenon – 15 young Hungarian poets translated 15 Bulgarian poets and vice versa. We also presented the book Ruminations on life and death, complied by the prominent scientist Elemer Hankiss. He was host of a very popular TV dispute and the discussions of the participants, compiled and revised, were included in the book. I believe it will provoke the interest of the Bulgarian public.

Long live the cinema!
This was the motto of our film shows in the Odeon cinema, focusing on 14 classical Hungarian films, from the period 1948-1993. For the Week of the New Hungarian Cinema we selected and presented a wonderful bouquet of six new movies, produced in the period 1999-2004. There is a marked interest in documentary movies, we have translated five documentaries, which we will show in early June. I already mentioned Malko Teatro and I will break yet another theatrical news. The original puppet opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” of the Hungarian Muppet Theatre Collibri proved a real success. The set-scene and the muppets were made by the Bulgarian Claudia Oros. So, you see, we had Bulgarian participation again.

If we are to draw an annual review of the Hungarian Cultural Institute activities, we will see that during the last academic year the institute has had a total of 273 events. And this is not a small number. 97 of them were held outside Sofia, and some even outside the borders of Bulgaria (in Turkey, Macedonia and Albania).

Ekaterina Pavlova