COURAGE

connecting collections

Eglė Borutaitė-Makariūnienė is the daughter of the famous Lithuanian writer Kazys Boruta. In 1968, she and Elga Borutienė, the third wife of the writer, gave part of his personal papers (various manuscripts) to the manuscript section of the Institute of Lithuanian Language and Literature (the exact date when they started to collect the manuscripts is unknown). The same year, the Institute purchased manuscripts of the writer’s unpublished works from Boruta’s widow.

Eglė Borutaitė-Makariūnienė actively disseminates the writer’s legacy. She participates in various meetings and conferences dedicated to Boruta. In 2005, Borutaitė-Makariūnienė edited a volume of memoirs about the writer, Susitikimai su Kaziu Boruta (Meetings with Kazys Boruta, Vilnius: Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla).

Jacek Borzych is a film producer and a popularizer of film culture. He co-organized film festivals and competitions; he is also a Chairman of the Board at the Association for Film Education (Stowarzyszenie na rzecz edukacji filmowej).

Since the early 1980s he has documented historical changes in Poland, especially the turbulent events like strikes and clashes. For many decades he has been associated with Video Studio Gdansk, where he deals with film production and realization, as well as archiving. He also oversees queries, requested by researchers, journalists and other filmmakers. Since 2004 he is a Chairman of the Board at the Film Archive Foundation “Roads to Solidarity” (Fundacja Archiwum Filmowe „Drogi do niepodległości”), where he has organized a gradual digitization of the Video Studio Gdansk archives.

Marijan Bosnar was born on 31 March 1980, in Zagreb. In the same city, he completed elementary and secondary school. He graduated in history in 2004 at the Centre for Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb. His mentor was Prof Aleksandar Buczynski and his research topic related to early modern British history. Since December 2004, he has been employed at the Croatian State Archives. Since that time, he has dealt with personal papers and family collections. He was the author of two books dealing with personal papers Osobni arhivski fond – Rudi Supek (Personal Archival Fond - Rudi Supek), Zagreb 2010 and Osobni arhivski fond Vesna Parun: analitički inventar (Personal Archival Fond of Vesna Parun: analytical inventory) Zagreb 2012. Both of these deals with the cultural opposition, that is, two dissidents from the period of the communist regime.

Marijan Bosnar did not participate in any form of opposition, but touched upon the topic of cultural opposition in his archivist work. He has written two books concerning the philosopher Rudi Supek (1913-1993) and the writer and poet,Vesna Parun (1922-2010), who also belonged to dissident circles in Yugoslavia.

Ferenc Botka was a scholar of Slavic languages and Hungarian, and also a skilled bibliographer who initiated the publication of several sources that have been important from the perspective of the Hungarian cultural history of the political Left. After completing his degree in Hungarian and Serbian Studies at the University of Budapest (today's ELTE), he started his career as a high school teacher of Hungarian and Russian. He published on Mayakovsky. In 1964, he continued his studies as an "aspiráns" (which eventually led to the degree of Candidatus Scientiarum, CSc in the Soviet and Hungarian system of the time) at the Lomonosov University in Moscow. He was doing research on the post-1919 Hungarian emigration in the Soviet Union. After earning his CSc, he worked at the Petőfi Literary Museum. He retired in 1993. Beginning in 1984, he served as the Director-in-Chief of the Museum. In the 1970s, he focused on the interwar Leftist tradition in Hungary. Throughout the 1980s, he studied the Hungarian writer Tibor Déry.

Botka was a convinced communist, and a reliable cadre of the Kádár regime, who was decorated with several state prizes in the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, he believed in the professional ethos of the archivist and philologist, and he tried to detach himself from all ideological biases when it came to the enrichment of Museum's collections. Precisely because of his political commitment he proved a shield for archivists who started the practice of collecting samizdat materials. He also supported the idea of approaching emigré writers, even the ones who were anti-communist, with the objective of persuading them to donate their personal bequests and archives to the Museum. Through his efforts, he made a significantly contribution to the creation within the Museum of a large samizdat and, especially, emigré collection.

Vladimír Boudník was a Czech artist and graphic designer who was known mainly for his active and structural graphic design. He graduated from the State School of Graphic Design (1945-1949). He was one of the main representatives of Czech Informalism in the 1960s. From 1952 to 1965 he worked at the ČKD Vysočany factory, where he discovered materials and inspiration for his work. He was a close friend of the writer Bohumil Hrabal and he also appeared as a character in his novels. Hrabal’s novella “The Gentle Barbarian” deals with Boudník’s life and work. Boudník created his own artistic style of “explosionalism”, which was meant to be the “seismographic recording of nerve impulses”, as he himself wrote in one of his manifestos. He also created “active graphic design” which consists of recordings of spontaneous work using different materials. He also took part in many street events in the 1950s.