[ Veranstaltungen - Conferences ]

The Open Society Archives (OSA) in Budapest organizes the workshop Visions after the Fall: Museums, Archives, and Cinema in the reshaping of popular perceptions of the socialist past, June 8-11, 2006.
The aim of the workshop is to contribute to the understanding of the ways in which historical revisionism uses both familiar and recently discovered audio-visual material – from popular cinematographic imagery to previously classified information. The principles of exhibiting these materials and other ways of making them available to the broad public will be in the focus of the workshop discussions. The workshop will analyze the use of audio-visual material including archival footage, documentary and feature films, exhibition catalogues, memorials, and other traces of historical remembrance in the process of "reshaping" the memory of the socialist past in Eastern Europe.


The following panels will be presented:

I. Museums: Between Terror and "Normalization"

The presenters at the panel will analyze different cases of recent historical exhibitions which addressed the socialist past, introduced new archival documents, drew attention to the sites of political repression, and challenged the established socialist historiographies.

Scope of issues:

Sites of terror turned into museums and exhibitions

Representations of everyday socialism

Commemorations of the transition: the roles of state museums in transitional justice

Multi-media presentations and the role of video material in representing history

II. Archives: the source of the unique and unknown

The presenters at the panel will analyze the use of archival (especially audio-visual) footage in recent historical research as well as in works intended for the wider public, such as documentary and fiction films. The panel will discuss the consequences in terms of expanded access to the footage as well as methodological issues of its presentation to audiences with different degrees of historical and audio-visual expertise.

Scope of issues:

Emergence of previously classified material in (re)shaping the past

East, West, elsewhere - Unification of sources

The emergence of new political borders and the division of previously shared heritage

Educational role of the audio-visual material

The change in reading the material depending on the context and audiences' competence.

III. Cinema: shaping the public

The panel will analyze recent works of fiction and non-fiction addressing the image of the socialist past, discussing whether inter-country comparisons are meaningful when speaking about the socialist past in the region.

Scope of issues:

Historical accounts presented to the mass audience: are there any rules of the game?

Private footage and home video in cinema: contrasting "big" and "small" histories

Archival research in filmmaking and the role of experts

Authenticity in creating historical accounts: modes and methods

Location: OSA Archivum, Goldberger-ház, Arany János utca 32, 1051 Budapest.

Detailed informations about the programme will soon be available at www.osa.ceu.hu