On June 7, in the Main Hall of the Akvárium Klub, the Budapest Pride launched the 29th Budapest Pride Community Festival with the opening ceremony, together with actors from domestic cultural life and active representatives of the LGBTQ community.
The slogan of the festival is unchanged “Claim back your future!”, which points to systemic problems present in society with different effects, but feeding from similar roots and reinforcing each other (racism, housing crisis, ecological crisis, crisis of faith in democracy, homophobia, transphobia and sexism), as well as the answers that can be given to them. Many people react to the chaotic reality that surrounds us with anxiety, while others react with anger or increasing apathy. The Budapest Pride team believes that the community response to social problems is the solution: grassroots initiatives and system-critical civic cooperation that helps each other’s causes.
This year, the Budapest Pride Community Festival takes place over two weeks (June 7 – June 23, 2024), during which interested crowds can participate in more than 60 programs of NGOs and individuals in Budapest and in 2 cities outside the capital.
The host of the opening ceremony was comedian and psychologist Eszter Ráskó, who with her usual ease greeted the guests with thoughts containing a very deep message: she told through her own example that one of the main common difficulties of groups different from mainstream society is that most of them feel that they are not lovable people.
Viktória Radványi, who spoke on behalf of the Rainbow Mission Foundation, which organizes Budapest Pride, said in her speech: “It outrages me how the government talks about our family. That my children, who have two mothers, have to grow up in a country where the government that is supposed to protect them shoves such sickening homophobic hate campaigns in their faces.”
Zsolt Nagy greeted the LGBTQ community and supporters in a video and said that “As a responsible, creative person, he feels that his duties are not only for the stage or in front of the camera, but also for participating in such events.”
According to tradition, the Háttér Award was presented at the event, with which every year since 2005 the Háttér Society honors a person (group or project) who has done a lot for the community in the past period. This year Mariann Filó, one of the organizers of Budapest Pride, member of the LGBTQ division of the Hungarian Psychological Association, received the award. In her speech, she described the ups and downs she experiences in her daily life due to the duality that “some people decide that she is worthy of an award and recognize her activities for the LGBTQ community, on the other hand, others look at her disapprovingly, make comments behind her back, they ask her to hide it, or they even specifically drag her out for it, as if she were committing a crime”.
Finally, Anna Daróczi, a roma feminist activist, criticized everyday injustices and asked everyone to actively seek contact: “read roma authors, involve roma organizations in your work, hire roma workers, talk to roma professionals, participate on our events and make connections. I ask the same from my roma brothers: read up on things, watch films on the subject, follow LGBTQ organizations, involve them in your activities, actively seek contact.”
Among the speeches, drag queen and the band Galaxisok also performed.
Before and during the event, the 2023 Budapest 150 LGBTQ Memorial exhibition was made available for viewing again on the wall of the hall, which, with the cooperation of Budapest Pride and Budapest Brand, presented 150 locations related to the LGBTQ community on the occasion of Budapest’s 150th anniversary.
This year’s Pride month awaits interested parties with programs across the country. As the end of the festival, we will hold the Budapest Pride March on Saturday, June 22: the procession starts from Podmaniczky Street, goes along Andrássy Street, then arrives at Vajdahunyad Castle and ends with Civil Village, speeches and music. This year, we will do everything we can to ensure that you can join the parade in many places along the entire length of the march.
