Dear Professors, dear students,
We, as Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica Silvio d’Amico, would express our full solidarity to the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest.
We are very close to you and to your fight against the negative changes occurring in these months to your institution, to the freedom of speech and learning that your country is living.
Our spiritual support, as creative community, made of directors and actors, is all with you.
All the best and resist
Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica Silvio d’Amico
ROME (Italy)
As of September 1st, the University of Theatre and Film Arts, Budapest a major, 155-years old Academia, cradle and home of outstanding artists’ generation was transformed from public institution into the property of a „private” foundation. Its 5-member board got mandate from the Ministry of Innovation and Technology to own and lead the University with no time limit and formal state control. The new owners are on the one hand influential figures of the current theatre and film scene, and on the other hand representatives of the country’s oil refiner, Mol Group – all closely linked to the Prime Minister. The board issued without any previous talks new founding regulations which deprived the University’s Senate of all its decision-making power. Thus, the academic autonomy of the institution is fully demolished. Contesting this authoritarian intervention, the Senate and the leadership of the University has resigned. At the same time students proclaimed they did not acknowledge the legitimacy of the board (whose chair, National Theatre director Attila Vidnyanszky has been continuously blaming the school and its community) and call for its withdrawal. To demonstrate their will, they occupied the Academia’s main building on Monday. A huge wave of solidarity has been evolving since – a desperate cry for the respect and maintenance of universal values in a regime which systematically dismantles the traditional spaces of self-governance. The upcoming days will be decisive, as the courses are supposed to get launched next Monday and the new board binds the leaving leadership to assure the smooth transition – while students remain committed to stand for their case.
Hungary: Protesters rally against university ‘takeover’ in Budapest