COURAGE

connecting collections

The film is about a group of young artists and intellectuals (called Muskátli’s group), which was named after a café in Budapest that was their favourite meeting point in the city centre. The first part of the movie focuses on dr. László Végh, who was a physician and an avant-garde musician at the same time and also the protagonist of the circle. The interviewees remember the extravagant activity of dr. László Végh (e.g. playing experimental music) and the group, followed by official footage that shows the parallel structures of the socialist regime (this method was also used in the other parts of the series).

The second part of the movie presents the artistic and community salon of Pál Petrigalla. After the revolution of 1956, Petrigalla began to organize musical and (beginning in the 1960s) literary and other artistic events in his private apartment, which was located in a central neighbourhood of the city (close to the House of Parliament, the Soviet Memorial, and the American Embassy). Around these events, a community was established (with cc. 150-200 members). In many respects, Petrigalla was ahead of his time. He was a forerunner for the cultural centre directors who in the late 1960s provided space for artistic projects and exhibitions which did not belong to the realm of supported art, but could be categorized as tolerated or prohibited.

The third part of Kisfaludy’s movie begins with the memories of boat trips that are interpreted by the participants as a form of cultural escapism (cultural resistance). This section also concentrates on the intergenerational relationships between the representatives of the (old) classical avant-garde (e.g. Lajos Kassák, Dezső Korniss, etc.) and (young) neo-avant-garde as a personal, political and aesthetical connection. Another important aspect was the influence of contemporary western movies, especially French cinema (nouvelle vague), which was very appealing to young intellectuals. Later, many of the members of the group became film directors or worked in movie production.
The interviewees also talk about an emblematic new year’s eve party, which lasted almost 10 days at a private apartment. As the participants mention, over the course of these ten days people engaged in subversive activities. Even French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson made an appearance at the party.
Törvénytelen muskátli follows historical chronology. This part covers the revolt of 1968.  The problem of political engagement came up in the interviews. Interestingly, most of the speakers interpret their own (cultural) activities in a historical context. Following the logic of this narrative, these activities were against the dominant ideology, but not directly political. According to the interpretations given by the participants, "it was cultural resistance.”

The architect Gheorghe Leahu kept a secret diary in the period 1985–1989. In view of the risk of being arrested if the diary was discovered by the Securitate, he stored it in his garage, in a black cover, under some spare tires. After work, Leahu would write in this diary about aspects of his daily life and personal impressions. In the context of an increasingly repressive regime during the 1980s, this was a way of venting an intellectual’s resentments in communist Romania. In his diary, Leahu reported in detail on the severe shortages which affected everyday life in Romania in the 1980s, on the absurdity of the policies of Ceauşescu’s regime, and on the ridiculous nature of the official propaganda, especially the cult of the dictator’s personality.
Leahu was very critical of the regime in the pages of his diary. According to these notes, day to day life in Romania in the 1980s had become a fight for survival, a desperate struggle for food and other consumer goods, and professional activity, a long line of humiliations, caused by the arbitrary and absurd interventions of the holders of political power in the activity of architects. He also constantly criticised the policies of urban restructuring of the capital. In one of the passages dealing with this topic, Leahu noted the effects these policies were having on the identity of the city, but also on everyday life: “Old buildings are being demolished at an infernal pace, many new low-quality buildings are taking their place, the city is losing its personality, it is being completely transformed, the blocks of flats are steamrolling over entire neighbourhoods with gardens and backyards and decades– or centuries-old trees. Instead of life in a quiet backyard, we squeeze into blocks of flats like worms on the vertical, subject to barbarous austerity measures, with hot running water only five times a week, for two hours, always in the cold during the winter, we are becoming depersonalised like soldiers of a blind army of workers” (Leahu 2013, 56). The diary, published in 2005 by the Civic Academic Foundation under the title: Arhitect în “Epoca de Aur” (Architect in the “Golden Age”), constitutes a valuable historical source of information concerning everyday life in Romania in the 1980s. The content of the diary and the conditions in which it was written reflect the atmosphere of generalised fear, frustration, and helplessness in which many Romanian intellectuals were living in the 1980s.

Watercolour painting was for Gheorghe Leahu a form of escape from the constraints imposed on the activity of architects under communism, which became more severe in the last decade of the regime. In the 1980s, Ceauşescu intensified the process of urban restructuring of Bucharest, which entailed the demolition of entire areas in the centre of the Romanian capital to make room for new boulevards. These actions were legitimised by the concept of “urban systematisation,” which was presented in the official discourse as a process of modernisation through which the city would acquire a new socialist identity. The watercolours painted by Leahu in the 1970s and 1980s portray urban landscapes, especially in the old centre of Bucharest. In addition to their artistic value, these watercolours represent, according to their author, a “source of documentation” concerning the architecture of the Romanian capital before the demolitions brought about by the so-called “urban systematisation.”
A selection of these watercolours was included in an album that Gheorghe Leahu sent in 1986 to the Sport Turism Publishing House, entitled: Bucureşti – arhitectură şi culoare (Bucharest – Architecture and Colour). The album was passed by the censors, even though its introduction made no mention of Nicolae Ceauşescu. (Although this was not an official requirement of the publishing houses, most authors did refer to various quotations from the Secretary General in order to get their books published, so in the end, this reference became the norm, while its absence was seen as an ideological failing on the part of the author in question.) After the album was printed in 1988, the 4,500 copies were withdrawn before reaching the bookshops and destroyed. In addition to the failure to mention Ceaşescu’s name, another cause for the withdrawal of the album was the fact that it contained watercolours representing many old churches. Their presence contradicted the policy of the communist regime of discouraging the protection of the architectural heritage of the capital. Some employees of the printing house managed to rescue several copies, which they delivered to the author. The volume was republished in 1989 in a censored edition, and again in 1991, this time in an edition free of any censorship constraints. This volume, as well as others published by Leahu after 1989, represented an important component of the post-communist visual identity, and promoted in the public space a nostalgic approach to the old centre of Bucharest.