Cultural agenda

Although in Hungary the technology is still in its infancy and the legal background not clarified, the emergence of digital texts and e-readers along with the fall of printed book turnover is a phenomenon which is experienced throughout the world. So the question comes up: what’s next? Give me the latest version of the iPad and Kindle or leave me alone with all this stuff because I’m a bibliophile? Experts who were invited to the topic-related presentation of the fifth MEDIA Conference in Budapest were searching for answers together with students to the issues of copyright and content-sharing problems as well as to questions connected to publishers’ and distributors’ strategies.


Among the guests were Eszter Gyuricza, head of Hungary’s leading publisher and bookstore Alexandra; dr. Balázs Bodó economist, senior lecturer at the Faculty of Economics of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics; and Péter Weiler, managing director of eBook Hungary Ltd .

First of all, the presenters made it clear that having different ideas about technological innovations comes naturally to the youth because they grew up in a digital world.

According to Péter Weiler, eBook Hungary started with an approach which aimed at preparing readers for a new world where digital texts succeed traditional books, which is already well-known in the Western countries. Whether books are really going to disappear or not is a controversial point because, despite preliminary expectations, the radio was also not abolished by television, but the market is definitely undergoing a change. The company invests its faith not in technology, but in people who may love digital reading in the future.

Interview with Hobo on the last shooting day of Bald Dog Rock II

Thirty years after making the cult film 'Kopaszkutya' (Bald Dog Rock, 1981), director György Szomjas doesn’t want to make a second part of the story, but a retrospection of the past decades in the language of film, which will be a mixture of documentary, musical and fiction.

'30 years, the blues and us'

'Bald Dog Rock' has been seen by one million people in the Hungarian cinemas while the two farewell concerts of the Hobo Blues Band (HBB) had 22 thousand visitors last spring. This predicts massive public interest in the movie 'Bald Dog Rock II'.

'It would have been interesting to make only a fiction, but the style we are standing for is neither trendy nor mainstream so nobody finds it attractive and we have no resources. The main characters are looking back at the movie while they talk about the last thirty years: what they’ve been doing in this time. This is what the director is interested in, but we don’t know the final form, because we are only through 5 shooting days. I am optimistic about it, it will be full of honest and deep things, I think', says Hobo.

Written by Mária Ballai

Negreni (Körösfeketetó) is a little Romanian village just after the King’s Pass (Király-hágó). Being a true Transylvanian place it lies in an enchanted valley surrounded by mountains. In this time of the year they are dressed in the colours of autumn. Morning fog blankets them. The famous Negreni Fair (Feketetói vásár) takes place here every year on the second weekend of October.

Written by Ádám Terjék

There is a new documentary film in the Hungarian cinemas about the football icon, Puskás. It is an epoch-making work using several archive photos, videos and original letters of his life. The new techniques and ideas applied in this film will definitely mean some revolution in the documentary film-making.

Written by Ludmilla Beáta Aranyi

Spring begins, warm weather is coming to Budapest, everybody goes out looking for great time to have, and what this city can offer on March and April will certainly suit their needs.

Festival and programme panorama.