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Tamás Fodor (1942-) is a director, actor, and founding member of Orfeo Studio and Studio “K.”

He studied Hungarian literature and pedagogy at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and began his career as an amateur actor. He performed as a member of the Universitas Company, which was organized within the University Stage at ELTE in 1961. This formation played a significant role in the life of the university. The 1970s were a kind of legendary period for the company, and its members sought themes and forms of art beyond the mainstream trends.

Tamás Fodor had state permission to function as an official performer, and he held independent performances and recited poems by authors who did not have the support of the official cultural policy. He said in his interview that these occasions were more than mere poetry recitations, because in the context of an authoritarian system, where suppression was strong and profound, every poem could move people. After his second performance, the agitation and propaganda secretary of the Budapest party committee appeared in Ibolya Surányi’s apartment, who was one of the organizers of University Stage and Fodor’s mentor. He was indignant, and he said that because of the programs in which Surányi and Fodor had participated, the state functionaries had had to read poems for days to check them. Surányi and Fodor were proud of this accomplishment: they had made party functionaries read poems.

Fodor’s independent career started in 1969, when he joined the Orfeo group. He established the theatre studio within the group two years later. The Studio seceded from the group and changed its name to Studio K.

The Orfeo members criticized official socialism from the left, on a Marxist foundation. They wanted to create performances with new styles and to communicate their views to society. Etolie (1971) was their first performance. In it, they discussed the theoretical and practical questions of the revolution. Vurstli (1972) presented the relationship between the individual and power. The state cultural authorities initiated an attack against Orfeo in 1972. They accused the members of the group of leading an immoral lifestyle and spreading hostile Western ideology. In the end, the prosecution did not condemn the members of the group, although they were excluded from every cultural institution. István Malgot and Tamás Fodor got a notice indicating that they were being accused of “spreading their antisocial views.”

Studio “K” staged a lot of important and impressive plays after 1974, as well, for example, the legendary Woyzeck (1977), Balkon (1979), and Leonce and Léna (1980). Tamás Fodor talked about the studio’s work in his interview: the company was against any schemas. Their aim was never to represent or interpret something. They just existed. They hated then and they hate now categorical concepts and any lack of tolerance in the arts or in human relationships.

Foltin, Jolán was born 15 September 1943, Budapest.
Hungarian dancer, choreographer, director. She won the Kossuth Prize and the Erkel Ferenc Prize. In 1959, she became a member of the János Bihari Ensemble, and between 1982 and 1991, she directed it. She was a reformer of Hungarian children’s dance education. She founded the Örökség Gyermek Népművészeti Egyesület. She was the main actor and organizer of the first Hungarian folk dance house in 1972, Budapest. She also worked with the Honvéd Ensemble. Over the course of her carrier, she was interested in the fates of women and female-male relations (which she presented on stage too). Her famous plays include “Books of women” [Asszonyok könyve], “Bells” [Harangok], “Bridal” [Lagzi], “Pass…” [Elmúlik…]

Frane Franić, archbishop of Split and theologian, was born on December 29, 1912 in Kaštel Kambelovac, not far from Split, where he attended primary school (1919-1923). Then he went to Split, where he was educated first in the public, and then diocesan classical gymnasium (1923-1931). His theological-philosophical views were formed at the theological college in the central theological seminary in Split (1931-1937). He was ordained a priest in 1936, and thereafter he went to Rome   to study dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, obtaining the title of Ph.D. in theology in 1941. After returning to Split at the beginning of the Second World War, he accepted numerous duties in the area of pastoral care and education. He served as a chaplain in the Sveti Rok Prison in Split, where he also worked as a professor at the public and diocesan gymnasium. After the war, he began to preside over the Central Theological Seminary of his diocese (1945-1956).

Franić was ordained a bishop in 1950, when he became auxiliary bishop and general vicar of the Archbishop of Split, Klement Kvirin Bonefačić. After the death Archbishop Bonefačić in 1954, the Holy See appointed him the apostolic administrator of the Split-Makarska Diocese, so he became the official bishop of the diocese of Split-Makarska only in 1960. His appointment to the bishop’s see was welcomed by the Communist Party in Split, because Archbishop Franić, as a prison chaplain, had in various ways aided the detained communists during the Italian occupation of Dalmatia and Split. However, as soon as Franić's agitation against clerical associations acting under a governmental initiative arose, without any connection with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, a lawsuit was filed against his diocese. In that trial in 1956, which was a precedent throughout Croatia and Yugoslavia, the communist authorities forcibly banned the operation of the bishop's seminary and its educational institutions. Apart from the seminary buildings and its school facilities, such as the archdiocesan boy's seminary, the authorities even nationalized Franić's palace. From that point forward, as Kovačić says, Franić lived in a small flat which had been under regime surveillance that entire time. At the same time, Franić began to publish the ‘Official Bulletin of the Split-Makarska Diocese’ with a Cyclostyle copier, in which he published texts in which he criticized the possibility that any members of his clergy could be found in clerical associations under state control. Because of this, the authorities seized the first issue of this journal.

In Franić's time, more precisely in 1969, his diocese was elevated to an archdiocese by a papal bull issued by Pope Paul VI. Franić headed his own archdiocese until 1988, when he withdrew from active service. In that period, he was vice-president of the Conference of Bishops of Yugoslavia. As a Split bishop, he was very active in the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) by participating in the emergence of two significant dogmatic constitutions, the Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium. Interestingly, he insisted on the expression Ecclesia militans in the parliamentary commissions to point out the combative character of the Churches in Eastern of Europe under communism. Franić's speech in defence of that statement was held at the conclave meeting on October 2, 1963, when he emphasized that "the Church cannot offend any reasonable man in the world with that expression Ecclesia militans, not even Marx himself" (Moro 2007: 149).

Later he participated in the work of numerous episcopal synods in the Vatican in the 1970s and 1980s, and became a member of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Noteworthy among Franic's works are the two editions Putovi dijaloga (The Ways of Dialogue, Split 1973, reprinted in 2000), which describe the attempts at dialogue with the communist regime and its intellectual class. His work as a bishop during the socialist period is documented by the collection of texts Bit ćete mi svjedoci (You Shall Be My Witnesses, Split, 1996), while his recollections of the Second Vatican Council are recorded in the book Crkva, stup istine – sjećanja na moje doktrinalne aktivnosti na Drugom vatikanskom saboru (The Church, Pillar of Truth - Memories of My Doctrinal Activities at the Second Vatican Council II, Split, 1998). He died in Split on March 17, 2007 at the age of 95.

The Inconnu artist group announced an international call for submissions of works of art for an exhibition entitled “A harcoló város/The Fighting City, 1986” for the 30^th anniversary of the 1956 Revolution. The actual identify of the agent who went by the code name Frederich was never discovered. He was related to the group in some way, and he was the important person who took photographs of the artworks before they were destroyed. We can in fact reconstruct the exhibition on the basis of these photos “thanks” to his work.

Kurts Fridrihsons (1911-1991) was a Latvian painter, a personality venerated for artistic quality and intellectual independence of his work. Before the WWII he spent some time in Paris, where he made friends in artistic circles, among them with writer André Gide and painter André Derraine. K. Fridrihsons and a group of his friends in Riga in autumn 1945 initiated  informal meetings, a kind of the literary salon, on Mondays to discuss literature and art. These meetings continued until approximately mid-1946. In January 1951 13 people were arrested and sentenced from 7 to 25 years in Gulag, among other indictments they were accused of establishment and participation in the above-mentioned meetings named by čekists as "reactionary anti-Soviet group". K. Fridrihsons was sentenced to 25 years. K. Fridrihsons spent his imprisonment in 1951-1956 in Gulag camps in Omsk oblast. Here he made friends with his co-inmates of artistic and intellectual background, such as Russian Nikolai Gumilev, Lithuanians Antanas Kučingis and Vincas Steponavičius. He used all possibilities to elaborate his professional skills and to maintain his intellectual integrity. He asked his wife to send materials for drawing and painting in water color. It has been told that he made a lot of portraits of his inmates in a post-card format that they sent home instead of photographs. And he made 3,5 thousand water color paintings. 1474 of them in 2003 and 2006 were donated to the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia by his heirs Gundega Repše and Jānis Spalviņš. Fridrihsons' water color paintings in part were inspired by environments of the camp, but the most part of them reflect associations created by literature and drama, his images about Middle East, Native Americans, Scandinavia, memories about France and Latvia.  After his return to Riga K. Fridrihsons was largely ignored by Soviet Latvian art authorities, he had his first personal exhibition only in 1969. But he was always in center of intellectual life in Latvia, and he had quite considerable informal intellectual influence.