László Rajk, the artistic director of the Oscar-winning Hungarian film Son of Saul (2015) is scheduled to give a public lecture entitled Art and the Holocaust: The Making of Son of Saul on November 4th, 2016, at 3:00 PM at Concordia University in Montreal. The event is being presented by a number of local organizations, including the Canadian Hungarian Democratic Charter, in conjunction with the School of Community and Public Affairs and the Department of Political Science.
László Rajk’s career as an artist and human rights activist spans many decades. From 1975 on, he was one of the leaders of the democratic opposition to the Hungarian one-party state. He was immediately black listed for exercising his civil rights by the Communist Party and was not allowed to work under his own name until the collapse of the Berlin Wall. After Hungary’s first free elections in 1990, he served six years as a Liberal member of Parliament. Trained as a professional architect, Rajk worked as production designer or art director on more than 50 films, with such well known directors as Costa Gavras, John Irwin, Miklós Jancsó, Béla Tarr, Tony Gatlif, Fatih Akin and Ridley Scott. He won The Art Directors Guild Award for his work on Scott’s most recent film, The Martian, and served as Artistic Director of the Oscar winning Son of Saul. In 1999, he was made Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Mérite by the French government. In August 2016, he returned all the honors bestowed upon him by the Hungarian state to protest the current government’s practice of honouring and decorating people who advocate hatred against minorities.
The event is free but as space is limited, please register online in advance.
The location of the event is: Room H-635, Henry F. Hall Building (1455 De Maisonneuve W.), Sir George William Campus. The nearest metro station is Guy-Concordia, on the Green line.
László Rajk
