Culture

Hajduhadház

Father’s Day, June 19, 2016

This Father’s Day and the Euro 2016 games, in which Hungary made a historic soccer comeback, beating Austria and achieving a tie with Iceland, brought back some memories for Montreal-based poet Endre Farkas of his own father, and of his days in a World War II labour camp… Father’s Day, June 19, 2016 My son is watching Eurocup soccer 2016. […]

by · June 21, 2016 · Culture
Songs along a Stony Road, a film by George Csicsery about Kallós.

Zoltán Kallós turns 90 years old

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán delivered a congratulatory speech at the gala held on April 23, 2016 in Kolozsvár (Cluj, Romania) to mark Zoltán Kallós’s 90th birthday. (Watch Kallós’s birthday song here.) Kallós is an extraordinary man; a true treasure of Hungarian folk culture. Born in 1926 in an ethnic Hungarian family in Transylvania, Romania, in a small village called […]

by · May 11, 2016 · Culture
Illustration: Péter Boros

Two Attila József poems for Mother’s Day

We’re remembering and celebrating mothers today in North America and instead of perusing contemporary Hungarian politics this Sunday, I flipped through my copy of Winter Night, an anthology of Attila József poems translated into English by John Bátki. Attila József (1905-1937), perhaps Hungary’s most “canonical” twentieth century poet, almost always paints the bleakness of everyday life for Hungary’s early twentieth […]

by · May 8, 2016 · Culture
János Kulka received the Best Actor award for his starring role in Demimonde.

Demimonde won five awards at the Tiburon International Film Festival

Tiburon is a small, picturesque town north of San Francisco in California. The Tiburon International Film Festival (TIFF) is an annual event in the Bay Area showcasing international films. The festival’s goal is to provide a greater understanding of the world and its many cultures through the artistic medium of film. TIFF’s motto: “Understanding the World through Film.” This year […]

by · April 18, 2016 · Culture
A Felház worship event. The photo appears on the group's Facebook page.

Hungary’s Orbán family and religion

On Friday, an unusual video surfaced featuring Gáspár Orbán, the 24 year old son of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Gáspár had hoped to evade media attention, despite being a former professional soccer player and the prime minister’s son. In 2014, he sent a letter to the editor of the 444.hu website requesting that they never write articles about him, […]

by · April 15, 2016 · Culture
Bursting Jobbik's bubble... Photo: Áron Süveg.

April 8 – International Romani Day

International Romani Day was first declared in 1990 to celebrate Roma culture and raise awareness of the issues facing Roma people and draw attention to discrimination directed at communities globally. Roma people were targeted for extermination by the Nazis in Europe, at least 200,000 were killed in concentration camps between 1939 and 1945. It is estimated that about a quarter […]

by · April 8, 2016 · Culture
Letter to the editor: Prezi responds to HFP article

Letter to the editor: Prezi responds to HFP article

Dear Editor, My name is Csaba, I am running Prezi’s International Communications. I was glad to see your article on us. However, it is not completely accurate. First of all, we haven’t opened up an office in San Francisco two years ago, but 7 years ago, in 2009. According to my reading, the article was suggesting that the government or […]

by · April 6, 2016 · Culture
Lajos Kossuth

Louis Kossuth, Leader of Hungarian Independence — An editorial from 1918

As tens of thousands of teachers, students and parents march in Budapest this afternoon, on the anniversary of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence, to protest the Orbán government’s disastrous education policies (we’ll provide some analysis on these larger-than-expected protests on Wednesday morning), today we’ll leave our readers with an historic editorial from the Magyar Tribune newspaper, dated […]

by · March 15, 2016 · Culture
Album cover - Elek Bacsik

Elek Bacsik and Dizzy Gillespie – For the Gypsies

Few have heard about Elek Bacsik, the great Hungarian-American jazz musician who died in 1993 in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He was 73 years old. In 1964, Bacsik made jazz history, when at the Antibes-Juan les Pins (France) festival he collaborated with Dizzy Gillespie, who honored his Roma heritage with a piece entitled For the Gypsies. The […]

by · March 12, 2016 · Culture
Gábor Alfréd Fehérvári (Freddie) will represent Hungary at the Eurovision festival in Stockholm. Photo: Duna TV.

Eurovision 2016 and Hungary — Lost opportunities

Eurovision is the target of much derision in the United Kingdom–a country, which has great, diverse talent, but has essentially no chance of ever winning a music festival that has descended into a trite, flashy circus, catering mainly to eastern European nationalists. Countries with large diaspora or expatriate populations tend to do much better in Eurovision, because voting rules stipulate […]

by · February 28, 2016 · Culture