Sixteen
years is a long time. Especially in the life of a contemporary arts
festival. This year for the 16th time The Budapest Autumn Festival is
bringing together, presenting, staging, exhibiting, putting on public
display and showing artists and creations of the most varied genres,
turning the spotlight onto today's arts for ten days in Budapest's late
summer and early winter cultural scene.
Organising
and financing the BAF is not always easy, and especially not this year.
Despite this they have made a big effort to offer a meaty programme,
and following the practice of our earlier festivals, to put together a
striking series of events that give an overall picture. Their aim is
the same as in previous years: to present the work of a few companies with an international reputation and parallel
with this, to show a few major figures and works of Hungarian
contemporary art. In short, we remain what we have always been, pillars
of the bridge joining Budapest and the wider world.
Since film plays an important part this year in the themes of the
programmes selected, they would like to jolt fans leafing through the
pages of their publications with familiar and unfamiliar images from
slide films. They have taken the slogan from a strip intended to teach
the correct fashion: 'Jewellery with a uniform is not good style!-
What is behind all this?
We must begin by drawing attention to two unusual musical films, both
combining the visuality of the 1920s with the music of today. One
evokes what was perhaps the first horror film in the history of the
cinema: we are projecting Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's 1922 film
Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror, with film music composed for
electronics and organ by the Austrian composer-organist, Wolfgang
Mitterer. Similarly, the 2005 composition by French composer Yan Maresz
and the 1923 silent film on which it is based, René Clair's Paris qui
dort, can be seen and heard at the festival in a production by the
legendary French contemporary music workshop, IRCAM.
100%Zappa will be a full-day bash devoted to the life work of the
brilliant Frank Zappa, with appearances by Zappa's former fellow
musicians, Zappa fans and clones from the Hungarian rock scene, and the
Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ádám Fischer. And while
on the subject of (slightly) lighter genres, this is the place to
mention Japan's number one jazz group, Soil & 'Pimp- Sessions,
which will bring its refined but brutal music to the Hungarian public
for the first time during the BAF.
As for the stage genres: the choreographer Yasmeen Godder, known for
her raw sincerity, and her dance company will be our guest again, as
well as the Japanese company Pappa Tarahumara, with an original dance
theatre interpretation of Three Sisters. The first performances of
contemporary Hungarian dramas will be held in joint productions with
five Hungarian theatres. Among the authors will be János Térey, Péter
Kárpáti and Ágens.
All this is only the tip of the iceberg. Rambling around the Kelenföld
switching centre, introducing the Fringe prize winners, contemporary
Russian films, EDIT2007, young composers' evening' and'and'and.
You'll find more information about the events planned for the 16th Budapest Autumn Festival, on website www.bof.hu.