Our articles in the magazine - 2007
Published on
Invisible immigrants: reconciling the Italian people
by Judit Járadi
‘Immigration has been present in Italy for almost 30 years. Yet we have no ministry and no policy to deal with it’ - Franca Eckert Coen, advisor to the Mayor of Rome on multiethnic affairs.
Although current statistics suggest that 114,000 foreign citizens live in Rome, the number of permit applications handed in to the Ministry of the Interior shows the figure is more like 300,000. Of these, Romanians are the largest community (at around 75,000), with the Philippines lagging behind (26,000), and the Polish, Peruvians, Egyptians and Chinese all hovering around the 8,000 mark. So Italy is effectively a transit country for refugees and immigrants from Africa and other developing parts of the world.
A Hungarian among the Gauls
by Linda Mézes
September 12, 2006, Washington DC. The air is buzzing in the historical building of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I am waiting for Nicolas Sarkozy, distinguished guest of the French-American Foundation, to deliver a speech worthy of presidents - ‘the United States and France: the future of a vital relationship’. The former French Interior Minister's speech is more of an impressively styled harangue à la française. By the time of the Q&A session at the end, I already know my question – but should I put it across in French or Hungarian? I hesitate. What this 52-year-old conservative politician - born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa - has preserved from his Hungarian parentage, seems a mystery.
Béla Tarr: 'Filmmakers act like prostitutes'
by Nóra Demők
Béla Tarr is a green-eyed, white-bearded man of cutting glances and thoughtfully elaborated sentences. In a quiet office tucked away in a small nook of his workshop, the 51-year-old - hailed by foreign critics as 'one of the current five best directors in the world' - briefly recalls when his Communist-era photography teacher informed him that he 'did not have the slightest idea' about filmmaking.
Palya Bea: 'The Balkans are a treasure cove'
by Veronika Kovács
From village girl to international Cannes starlet, the 30-year-old inspires with her brand of Hungarian and Bulgarian folk music, drawing reference from jazz and Persian and Hindi sung poems. World music and tradition is firmly back in.