COURAGE

connecting collections

The collection of Ladislav Mňačko (1919–1994), a Slovak writer and former prominent Czechoslovak journalist, consists of unique correspondence, manuscripts, prints and clippings which help to describe the life of this significant writer, who after August 1968 was a critic of the communist regime and a representative of Czechoslovak exile literature.

The Lajos Vajda Studio was officially established in 1972 as a circle of visual artists interested in experimental practices. The origins of the cohesiveness of the group lie in the spirit of the place and the group’s attachment to Szentendre and its artistic traditions. At the end of the 1960s, a vital, informal counterculture-cell came into existence in Szentendre in part because of the activities of young artists who inspired one another. The archive documents the history and the activities of the studio and its members.

Lazar Stojanović (1944-2017), film director, journalist and intellectual, was one of the most famous cultural dissidents of socialist Yugoslavia. His film “Plastic Jesus” (1971) was declared as anti-communist and anti-state propaganda and led to Stojanović’s three year imprisonment. The collection represents Stojanović’s personal compilation gathered over the previous decades and consists of books, newspapers, posters, catalogues and video materials/films.

The Section LL archive contains material produced by an important part of the Slovenian lesbian and gay movement and its activist groups since their establishment in 1984. The collection primarily holds documents and other materials related to the activities of Section LL, comprehensive press-clippings, underground magazines, promotional materials (posters, leaflets, etc.) and a variety of visual material, some with artistic merit. The archival materials testify to the first lesbian and gay organizations established not only in Yugoslavia, but also in socialist Europe. Moreover, the Slovenian gay and lesbian movement in the 1980s was somehow unique in the socialist context, since its activities were completely public and it enjoyed extensive, often even rather positive media coverage.