Tolkien Day 2014

Our Tolkien Day of this year was held in another, much more beautiful, but unfortunately also a bit too small cinema building compared to the previous year: the Urania National Filmtheatre. The only point of the programme which was internationally advertised by the organisers was the art workshop by Ted Nasmith—only this could you find also on the international event-list of The Tolkienist. Although this was truly the most special extra of the program, it is still only two hours and one venue of a full-day event in a big building full of people: elves, dwarves, orcs, hobbits, nazguls and other tolkienites.

The Tolkien Day is the one of our yearly events which is really planned for the general public, advertised in newspapers, visited by total strangers and most of our community is contributing on the organiser side somehow, if only by walking around in costumes and smiling on photographs. I did so—I spent the day as a dark-haired Elf in a dress designed for Galadriel (I suppose I could be Arwen borrowing granny's clothes, at least that was the only answer I could tell to a little girl who asked me whether I am Galadriel or not). I made Elvish hairstyle for visitors, even for a nazgûl, and guarded the small modell exhibition, checked tickets, and then the day was almost over and we could join the evening programme, so I cannot say much of the details of the day. I only went upstairs for a few minutes, where the café offered special foods like chocolate Erebor and lectures could be heard about the role of The Hobbit in the mithology, the love life of the Elves, the Elvish languages and writing systems, the movie adaptations and the Gift of Ilúvatar. There were also a talk with a guest who became known in Hungary with his special styled filmcritics on youtube. This proved to be a bit too popular, the crowd did not left much space for any air there. Also upstairs were the corner for children and the board games for grown-up children, and an exhibition of the works received in our Tolkien Art Competition.

I think it is useless to list more details of a program which I could not really see myself, but I hope most of the very lot of people who were all around the place could enjoy it, otherwise why would they stay? We also had a few international guests: I was glad to meet the Austrians (and suggested them the screening of the video about our Lithuanian camp as an English-speaking program) but only heard about the presence of Slovak TLV-participants. In the evening everybody still there gathered for the theatre program: songs, dances and a musical play about the forgotten heroes of Gondor. And in the end, as always, we made the traditional birthday toast to the Professor. So, that's about it—I don't have many pictures of my own, since the Galadriel costume do not have any pockets for camera, but on this facebook page there supposed to be collected all available pictures of the event.