About Tura
A Town of Folk Lore, Art and Songs
Tura in Pest County in Hungary is a town of about 8000 people located 50 kms from the Hungarian capital of Budapest.
The town is nestled in the Galga Valley between the Great Hungarian Plain (Nagy Alföld) and the Mátra Hills. Tura is surrounded by vegetable and flower farms and reflecting this fertile, pastoral setting the town is renowned of the imagination of its inhabitants which is manifested in everyday culture, traditional arts and craft. It seems that everyone is an artist or a musician. The needlework, cooking and folk songs of Tura are famous across Hungary. People here are passionate about culture and their connection to a long, complex history that informs much of life in this place. There is a deep seated sense of history that spans generations and informs the way people view their lives and their futures.
The stories that the Big Stories team created explore many facets of Tura’s history, culture and contemporary life - from community based care to the complex role that songs and music play from birth to death to strudel making and hunting.
This residency was made possible through partnerships with Griffith Film School in Brisbane and the Hungarian University of Theatre and Film Art. Over the 2 week residency in Tura Big Stories filmmakers worked with both Hungarian and Australian film students. This was a unique collaboration that produced stories with and about he community in Turn. The stories help to preserve, in another form, the intangible cultural heritage of the traditional songs and stories of the region as well as recording the meticulous crafts found in everyday culture.