Films and Publications
Film, Literature and Cultural Heritage
At the heart of Nomád Nemzedék’s film and publishing activities is the preservation, stewardship and transmission of the legacy of Sándor Csoóri. Through documentary films, audiovisual productions and publications, we seek to ensure that Csoóri’s poetic, essayistic and intellectual legacy remains accessible and relevant to new generations.
Our work also extends to other subjects connected with Hungarian culture and intellectual heritage. Through our films and publications, we preserve and present individual lives, creative legacies and cultural values, while seeking to bring them to new audiences both in Hungary and internationally.
Films
Documentaries, Portraits and Cultural Heritage
The Csoóri Series
Portraits from the Living World of Hungarian Folk Culture
The short documentary films of the Csoóri Series present the communities, artists and tradition-bearers who keep Hungarian folk culture alive today, both in Hungary and in Hungarian communities beyond the country’s borders.
The series introduces folk musicians, dancers, shepherds, craftspeople, teachers, tradition-bearers and communities who speak about the cultural heritage they preserve and pass on through their own lives.
Through personal stories, the films explore how tradition can remain a living part of the 21st century.
Inspired by the intellectual legacy of Sándor Csoóri, the series is rooted in the idea that folk culture is not a relic of the past, but a living source of community and cultural identity.
We Stood at the Centre of the World
Contemporaries and friends remember Sándor Csoóri
The film series We Stood at the Centre of the World evokes the life and intellectual legacy of Sándor Csoóri through the personal memories of those who knew him – his friends, fellow artists and contemporaries.
In each episode, the participants speak not only about Sándor Csoóri himself. Through their stories, they also evoke the historical, cultural and intellectual world in which they lived and worked together: the personal memory of an era in which literature, art, public life and history were closely intertwined.
The series is therefore both a portrait and a document of its time. These personal recollections offer a deeper understanding of Sándor Csoóri’s life and work, while preserving stories and experiences that form part of the shared memory of an entire generation.
The Collected Works of Sándor Csoóri
Preserving His Poetic and Intellectual Legacy
The stewardship of Sándor Csoóri’s oeuvre is one of the central areas of Nomád Nemzedék’s publishing activities. Launched in 2018, the series aims to make the works of the poet, essayist and public intellectual available to present and future generations in carefully edited new editions. The volumes are published by Erdélyi Szalon on behalf of Nomád Nemzedék.
Volume by volume, the series brings together the many dimensions of Sándor Csoóri’s work: his poetry, essays, children’s verse and some of the defining writings of his intellectual legacy. The books not only preserve an important literary heritage, but also allow Csoóri’s work to enter into an ongoing dialogue with contemporary readers.
For us, publishing his collected works is therefore not simply about preserving a legacy, but about passing it on – ensuring that Sándor Csoóri’s poetic and intellectual world continues to reach new generations of readers.
The Man Under Surveillance
State Security Documents on Sándor Csoóri
For many years, the state security services of Hungary’s communist regime closely monitored Sándor Csoóri’s life, personal contacts and public activities. More than five hundred state security reports concerning him survive from the period between 1979 and 1989.
In the publication series The Man Under Surveillance, historians Barbara Bank and Viktor Attila Soós examine and publish this remarkable body of archival material. The Daily Operational Information Reports follow Csoóri’s everyday life, meetings and network of relationships in almost diary-like detail, while also offering insight into the workings of an entire historical era.
Processing the thousands of pages of surviving documentation is a long-term undertaking. The four volumes published to date cover the first years of this extensive archival record, accompanied by historical commentary and annotations. The series contributes both to a deeper understanding of Sándor Csoóri’s life and public role and to the study of Hungary’s communist era.
Seventy-Seven Turkic Folk Tales
A collection by Éva Csáki and Áron Sipos
Seventy-Seven Turkic Folk Tales offers a wide-ranging selection from the rich storytelling traditions of the Turkic peoples. The volume preserves archaic tales and motifs that not only provide insight into the cultural heritage of the Turkic world, but also serve as an important source for research into the historical linguistic and cultural connections between Hungarian and Turkic peoples.
A substantial part of this nearly six-hundred-page collection is based on original fieldwork, while other tales were drawn from scholarly sources. The stories were translated directly from their original languages. The volume also contributes to documenting endangered Turkic languages and the oral traditions preserved through them.
The book was published in 2021 jointly by the Hungarian Heritage House and Nomád Nemzedék Ltd.
