COURAGE

ryšiai tarp kolekcijų

Andrei Siniavskii was a Soviet dissident, writer and literary critic and student of literature. The bulk of the collection includes his writings, correspondence and photographs. It is an extensive collection, containing material that he produced and collected over his lifetime, together with his wife Mariia Rozanova, who was lesser known but also a significant figure in the dissident movement. These include his writings, diaries, correspondence, interrogation and records from the 1966 trial of Siniavskii and another writer Yuli Daniel, printed matter, sound recordings, photographs, and memorabilia relating to Russian literature, civil rights in the Soviet Union, political trials and conditions of political prisoners in the Soviet Union, and Russian émigré affairs. This collection also includes records of the Russian-language Paris journal Sintaksis, published and edited by Siniavskii himself.

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 Weeks of Christian Culture and the Artists’ Priesthood were the very important cultural initiatives of the Polish Catholic Church, organised since the 1970s. They were the first nation-wide platform for artists of various professions, who were given a chance to speak freely and to show their works to the society – regardless of their beliefs. The participants had the opportunity to interact with independent culture, prohibited or absent from the official circulation. The collection includes both the documents on the initiatives’ history and the works of art created by its participants.