COURAGE

Підключення Колекцій

András Kisfaludy’s collection suggests ways of interpreting retrospective gazes on the alternative culture of the socialist period. While Kisfaludy is the owner of a sizable private collection that concerns alternative and dissent culture of the era, he is more a creator than a collector of documents. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was a member of the famous youth gang called "Kalef" (in 2006, he made a film about the gang). From 1968 to 1971, he was the percussionist of the underground band "Kex.” Kisfaludy began to make documentary films on cultural opposition in the 1990s. The core of his oeuvre was done between the early 1990s and early 2000s.

The status of the collection is special because the rights of the movies belong exclusively to András Kisfaludy, so the collection exists only as a private collection. However, the majority of his films are accessible via Youtube.

The Anonymous Mountaineer collection illustrates how a passion for the mountains and for climbing could become a passion for freedom. More precisely, the collection reflects a distinctive type of cultural opposition, practised by those with a passion for the mountains and for climbing. This sport permitted a temporary escape from the routine of life under communism into places where the communist regime effectively ceased to exist. At the same time, in the case of communist Romania there was also a second dimension of opposition, because climbing involved a connection with the parallel economy in order to procure the necessary technical equipment, which was not to be found in shops. The Anonymous Mountaineer collection preserves a great variety of climbing equipment that was either improvised by the owner of the collection or obtained on the black market, where such items were commercialised.

Antanas Miškinis (1905-1983) was a Lithuanian poet and Soviet political prisoner. He started his creative activity in the mid-1920s. In the mid-1940s, he joined the Lithuanian partisan movement, for which he was convicted and sent to Siberia. While serving his sentence, he wrote romantic poems (psalms). Many of them were copied out or learned by heart by other Lithuanian political prisoners at that time in Siberia. The collection holds psalms and poetry written by Miškinis during his imprisonment from 1948 to 1956.

Antanas Sniečkus was the first secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party from 1936 till his death in 1974. The collection holds many documents, including correspondence with Lithuanian writers, and transcripts of meetings with the intelligentsia (in 1957) which reflect the aspirations and ambitions of the country’s cultural elite to preserve and develop the cultural heritage of the Lithuanian nation. The most interesting documents for the project cover the period of de-Stalinisation in Soviet Lithuania.