Bela Balasz Studio Black Box Foundation (Fekete doboz)
Video equipment was "already" available in the state-supported Bela Balasz experimental studio (BBS) at the beginning of the 1980s. At first these resources were used for uncensored political and cultural documentaries (A. Mesz, Z. Bonta, and others) as well as an alternative for expensive film material. Limited by the lack of equipment, video art came out sporadically at best (P. Forgoes, M. Peternak, and others). The BBS also supplied the material and intellectual preconditions for the subversive work of the video newspaper BLACK BOX. Since 1987 support from the Soros Foundation has enabled BLACK BOX to devote itself to the tasks that government-owned television should have been fulfilling but wasn't. BLACK BOX. was there when the opposition began to take shape during the first tolerated mass demonstration in Hungary, during street fighting in Prague, Berlin, and Romania. The evidential power of its images forced the resignation of a minister. Every month BLACK BOX distributes a selection of short videos, some­ times selling them to television. The current political situation is making the work of BLACK BOX as indispensable as it was before, even if the state of affairs has been reversed 180 degrees. In 1990 the group split into the Black Box Foundation and Black Box Ltd. They are producing in­ dependently from BBS and have an archive of approx. 2500 hours of material. Karin Fritzsche. The Studio of Young Artists (FMS) (Invitation to a Funeral) We are saying farewell to FMS and FRIZ, the most creative stu­ dios that Hungarian Television (MTV) ever had. Instead of see­ ing these studios as a chance for development according to the spirit of the times, the new, pro­ government management of state television is moving back into structures of the 1970s. Two of the few "niches" for committed artists in Hungary have had to close their doors. FMS evolved from a club of young television directors to be­ come, since 1988, part of Hungarian Television. The studio produced innovative works that examine the visual idiom with the aim of undercutting the journalistic tradition of television with pictures. Another objective was the rejuvenation of values whose loss felt with particular pain in the East. It were these concerns that gave birth to the series "Kozjâték" (Interlude), which presented the visualized thoughts of a writer or thinker for five minutes seven times in the course of a week, sometimes presented in the form of an overall work, sometimes as independent five-minute essays. This project, which ran for around two years, offered daily moments of contemplation and brief relief from the daily blur of the TV machine to the viewer as well as a creative challenge and playground to videomakers; now it is no longer being financed by Hungarian television. This program presents a few outstanding examples from this series. Beszelgetes Body Gäborral (Talks with Gäbor Body); Globula; Tales; Az örmester (The Sergeant); Videolevel Magyarorszägröl (Video Letter from Hungary); Naprôl napra (From Day to Day); Tractétus; A halhatatlanságról (On Immortality); Téli hadjárat (The Winter War)