The Black Box Collection of Blinken OSA Archives in Budapest – officially catalogued as HU OSA 305 Fekete Doboz Alapítvány Video Archive – contains documentation of both motion pictures and paper-based records held on multiple devices. Over 200 documentary films and news programs were created by Black Box along with their inventory, providing alternative news and independent coverage about the social and political changes from 1988 to 1996, together with 3,000 hours of unedited footage shot on analog video by Black Box in Hungary and Eastern Europe, as well as textual materials containing handwritten script lists to the raw footage – these main items well reflect the rich and versatile content of the collection.
The independent filmmakers’ work resulted in, among others, over 500 hours of evening news and political programs broadcast by the state-controlled Hungarian Television in 1989; approx. 150 hours of video documenting the Opposition Roundtable Negotiations of 1989; over 50 documentary films about the Roma by the Roma Media School students of Hungary; and approx. 50 hours of footage documenting the change of regimes in the former Eastern Bloc countries. The collection also contains videotaped oral history interviews relating to the history and perception of Radio Free Europe – Radio Liberty. These works were often created well after the change of political system, covering the period 1988–1996.
Filmography of Black Box productions
1988
CIVILIAN TECHNIQUES (Fidesz), Vol. 1, Issue 1, 80 mins.
The cameras of Black Box followed for half a year the life of the group of young men in Budapest who initiated the Alliance of Young Democrats – Fidesz – a new, independent political organization of Hungarian youth.
THE PROJECT, Vol. 1, Issue 2, 75 mins.
The documentary report film presents the mass demonstration held in the summer of 1988 against the planned gigantic hydroelectric plant on the Danube at Bős-Nagymaros, menacing the most picturesque natural environment of the Danube Bend. The film also reports on the archeological rescue works that started to save findings in the planned floodplains along the barrage. Green activist Professor Béla Lipták, a Hungarian emigre returned home for a visit from the US, also gave an interview, summing up the arguments against building the megalomaniacal new industrial project.
Attachment: Hunger strike. Some dissident intellectuals in 1988 went on a hunger strike protesting the discriminative policy of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior that repeatedly refused their claim to a passport.
PARCEL, No. 301, Special issue, 100 mins.
On 16th of March 1988, the 30th anniversary of Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs’ execution, a symbolic empty grave was dedicated to the memory of all executed Hungarian revolutionaries of 1956 in Pére Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. On the same day in Budapest an unauthorized memorial process started at the unmarked graves of the victims in parcel no. 301 of Rákoskeresztúr Cemetery, followed by candlelit commemorations in downtown Budapest at Heroes’ Square and Batthyány Square. Relatives of the victims together with ’56-ers tell the camera what that day with its mournful memory meant to them ever since 1958.
HERE LIVES A PEOPLE, Vol. 1, Issue 3, 100 mins.
This issue contains news reports about the opposition movements unfolding in Hungary in the autumn of 1988: protest demonstrations in Budapest and Nagymaros against the planned dam on the Danube, strikes at the universities, a demonstration of conscientious objectors, on the 15th of November 1988 a peaceful solidarity march for Romanian workers on the first anniversary of the Braşov rebellion, brutally attacked by Budapest riot police.
1989
REQUESTS OF THE PEOPLE, Vol. 2, Issue 4, 100 mins.
This issue is about a series of memorial events on the streets of Budapest from late October 1988 to mid-March 1989. On the 23rd of October 1988, the 32nd anniversary of the outbreak of the Hungarian revolution, hundreds of demonstrators marched in downtown Budapest, during which the city was heavily patrolled by the police corps, blocking public areas, checking identities, etc. Two weeks later, on the 4th of November, Kádár’s supporters and members of the communist security agency (ÁVH) held a rally in Budapest at Köztársaság tér (Republic Square) to celebrate their victory: the suppression of the “counter-revolution.” On the national holiday of the 15th of March 1989, tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators demanded freedom and democracy in the streets of Budapest, and prominent leaders of the opposition held speeches, such as János Kis, Dénes Csengey, Viktor Orbán, and others.
NEW HUNGARIAN MOURNING, Special issue, 180 mins.
In the spring of 1989, a special committee of Hungarian Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Interior began the exhumation of Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs’ mortal remains in top-secret parcel no. 301 of Rákoskeresztúr Cemetery, Budapest. The videographers of Black Box managed to record shocking scenes at the location, as the corpses were found one by one lying with their faces turned downward towards the bottom of their graves for more than three decades. The interviews with the victims’ relatives, friends, ’56-ers, and witnesses provide a deep insight into the depraved secrets of a frightful period.
BELLS RINGING AT 12:30, Vol. 2, Issue 5, 100 mins.
On the 2nd of May 1989, representatives of the Opposition Roundtable Negotiations held a hearing about the report of the Committee for Historical Justice on the preparations for the public reburial ceremony of Imre Nagy and the revolutionary martyrs of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, planned for June 16th in Budapest.
The 16th of June 1989: footage of the public reburial of Imre Nagy and all the executed revolutionaries of 1956 is presented.
Attachment: “Instead of desperados we are rather afraid of our policemen.” Meanwhile the Hungarian Socialist Worker’s Party talked about democracy and human rights, and the police arresting innocent citizens day after day for political reasons. Then there are three fascinating stories about the everyday brutality of the Hungarian police, still under one-party state control.
JOURNEY TO KARABAH, 20 mins.
This issue is a wartime documentary made in 1989 on the tragic, sometimes tragicomic, scenes of the Armenian–Georgian conflict.
THE 1989 ROUNDTABLE NEGOTIATIONS OF THE DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION IN HUNGARY, Parts 1–5, 5x50 mins.
At the initiation of the Independent Legal Forum, six parties of the democratic opposition (Fidesz, Independent Smallholders Party, Hungarian Forum of Democrats, Hungarian Peoples’ Party, Alliance of Free Democrats, Social Democratic Party) together with two organizations (Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Fraternal Society, Democratic League of Independent Trade Unions) joined forces in March 1989 in Budapest to prepare for the transition talks with the ruling communist party MSZMP in order to achieve a peaceful and negotiated political change of system. The documentary series of five parts was edited from 150 hours of raw footage, and covers all the negotiations of both the Opposition and the National Roundtable Talks.
TWO OCTOBERS, 21 mins.
This issue is a portrait of Police Captain János Balogh, who was in charge of crowd control at the demonstrations in 1988, including the brutal police attack on some peaceful demonstrators on the memorial day of the 1956 revolution, the 23rd of October 1988. Exactly a year later, 23 October 1989, when the Hungarian Republic was proclaimed, he was the commander of Budapest police corps maintaining order during the official ceremonies.
1990
OUR BATTLES ON THE FRONT LINE, Vol. 3, Issue 6, 97 mins.
Black Box was among the first video crews that arrived on location to report on the Romanian uprising in December 1989. The first part of the report presents the fall of Ceausescu’s dictatorship and the volatile events of the revolution.
On Christmas Eve, thousands of Hungarians walked to Heroes’ Square in Budapest to pay tribute to the memory of martyrs who died in the street fights of the Romanian revolution. This was also the night when a secret police officer, Major József Végvári, made clandestine contact with a staff member of Black Box, for the purpose of warning the larger public about shocking evidence: the communist secret police, a few months before the first free general elections in the country, still surveilled the phone calls and mail of opposition activists, continued collecting information about them, and at the same time was busy destroying past sensitive files.
The second part of the issue contains four interviews with Major József Végvári. The first two of these were recorded before the “Duna-gate” scandal broke with the shocking evidence of the ongoing activities of communist secret agencies; meanwhile the other two were made after Végvári’s unmasking.
DUNA-GATE, 34 mins.
Those who have once seen the investigative report film made by Black Box will surely remember the “Duna-gate” scandal that forced the Minister of Interior to resign together with a number of secret police officers in Hungary. In late 1989, Police Major József Végvári, an active member of the III/3 secret department that surveilled domestic opposition, called the cameraman of Black Box to help in revealing the fact that just months before the future free democratic general elections, the ex-communist ruling party, renamed MSZP, was still monitoring the activists of the democratic opposition, just like it did in the “good old” Kádár era.
T.E.D.23. CHARLEY, 50 mins.
This is a portrait of secret police officer Major József Végváry, Dept. III/3, Hungarian Ministry of Interior.
HUNGARIAN CHANGES, Vol. 3, Issue 7, 60 mins.
This film is an hour-long overview of a year – all the major political changes in Hungary from spring 1988 to spring 1989, from the first euphoric demonstrations to the first democratic elections in forty years. The attachment of the issue presents the scenes of the Romanian revolution, and then the violent ethnic conflict on the streets of Tîrgu Mureş/Marosvásárhely, Romania, in March 1990.