CEU Hosts Hay Festival Events

For 25 years the Hay Festival has brought together writers from around the world to debate and share stories at its festival in the staggering beauty of the Welsh Borders. Hay celebrates great writings from poets, scientists, lyricists,  comedians, novelists, and environmentalists and the power of great ideas to transform our way of thinking. The festival creates an exchange of views and a meeting of minds, inspiring personal, political, and educational revelations. Hay is, in Bill Clinton's phrase, “The Woodstock of the mind.” This year, Budapest also joined the Hay Festival from May 4-6, which now includes 15 festivals across five continents.

“Hungary has a rich literary tradition and it seems a great place to explore the stories of Mitteleuropa,” says Peter Florence, founder of the Hay-on-Wye Festival. ”We have worked for many years with colleagues in Berlin and Moscow, but this is our first foray [into the former East].”

CEU Provost and Academic Pro-Rector Katalin Farkas emphasized at the pre-event press conference  that great thoughts are able to change the world. She also noted the importance of universities participating at festivals.

The festival program included conversations with renowned representatives of literature, art and science inspiring each other and the audience with their thoughts and stories. Among those participating was Jung Chang, the Nigerian poet and novelist; Ben Okri, the novelist; playwright and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi; and Tibor Fischer, the British-born writer of Hungarian parentage whose widelyacclaimed novel Under the Frog was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The festival program was kicked off with a concert by Sir Bob Geldof, the anti-poverty campaigner and an iconic figure of the 1985 Live Aid concert. The events took place at Petofi Museum of Literature (PIM) and CEU. Of the 14 festival events, CEU's Center for Arts and Culture (CAC) hosted three  at the university.

Jung Chang, author of the best-selling books Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (which the Asian Wall Street Journal called the most read book about China), and Mao: The Unknown Story, talked to John Kampfner, adviser to Google on freedom of expression and culture. Chang's books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies, in addition to millions in pirated editions and computer downloads in mainland China where both books are banned. She discussed her work and the changes China has seen in the decades since she wrote the global bestseller Wild Swans. The event, that was organized in association with Google, was introduced by CEU Center for Media and Communications Studies Senior Fellow Markos Kounalakis to a packed house in the CEU auditorium.

The second Hay Festival program at CEU, sponsored by IE university with the collaboration of CEU, involved Dr. Rolf Strom-Olsen, co-founder and current president of UR Mobile Services Inc. and Georg von Habsburg, the Austrian and Hungarian journalist, politician, and public figure. The event was chaired by Revel Guest, filmmaker, journalist, author, farmer, and chair of the Hay Festival, as well as the first woman producer/director of BBC's Panorama. The discussion covered some of the threats and opportunities that face the European Union today.

Finally, the film,My Beautiful Laundrette was screened and followed by a talk with screenwriter Hanif Kureishi and Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival. The film, which was critically acclaimed for its sensitive depiction of a homosexual relationship between a gay skinhead and a young Asian man, was nominated for an Academy Award.

For a video about the Jung Chang discussion, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADKxuRxsIKc