COURAGE

savienojot kolekcijas

The Alexandru Călinescu private collection epitomises the trajectory of an intellectual in an important university city who began to practise a camouflaged contestation, published in local student magazines, with a limited readership, and ended up in unequivocal public opposition, disseminated transnationally through foreign radio stations. The collection marks some of the key episodes in the movement of resistance to and contestation of the communist regime as it manifested itself in Iaşi, the historical capital of the region of Moldavia and the city with the oldest university in the Old Kingdom of Romania. At the same time, the collection and the personal story of Alexandru Călinescu illustrate a lesson in dignity in very difficult times, when there were few who had the courage to speak openly against the Ceaușescu regime.

The Weeks of Christian Culture and the Artists’ Priesthood were the very important cultural initiatives of the Polish Catholic Church, organised since the 1970s. They were the first nation-wide platform for artists of various professions, who were given a chance to speak freely and to show their works to the society – regardless of their beliefs. The participants had the opportunity to interact with independent culture, prohibited or absent from the official circulation. The collection includes both the documents on the initiatives’ history and the works of art created by its participants.

The Audiovisual Section of the Libri Prohibiti library contains recordings of non-conformist music and spoken word, underground lectures and seminars. It also contains video-documents and amateur film productions. The unavailability of the original recordings and total content consisting of thousands of exemplars makes the collection unique in the Czech context.