Presentation of “Belarus in Focus: through the eyes of foreign journalists”
The presentation took place in PEN-Center in Minsk on June 20.
The book is a collection of winning articles from an international competition (www.focus.solidarityby.eu) held jointly with the Press Club Polska in October 2011, according to the employee of the Informational bureau Solidarity with Belarus (Warsaw) Natallia Belikava.
The book is in Russian and in English. It is divided into three parts: the first one dedicated to the presidential elections, the second – to the economic crisis, and the third – “Belarusian dream of independent culture”.
According to Natallia Belikava, the book “has been approved by the Belarusian customs”: “When we imported the print-run for the presentation into Belarus, it took us long time to convince the customs-officers that the book was composed of the materials that had been published earlier.”
A member of the jury, editor-in-chief of “Nasha Niva” Andrey Dynko is not fully satisfied with the book. “First of all, assessing the material, I understood the importance of PR. Almost 50% of the book is occupied by the campaigns and institutions that in real life take less than 50%. For example, the Free Theater – there is a lot about it in the articles; however, very few people have attended their plays, even out of those who know about its existence,” said Dynko.
The second thing he remarked was that the topic of the publications was “generally the only one – the elections and the Square”.
Natallia Belikava, in response, said that in September this year the Informational bureau Solidarity with Belarus is going to hold the contest for the second time. “Perhaps, materials in it will be more diverse”.
The book was published in Warsaw and illustrated with photos by the Belarusian photographers – winners of the contest “Belarus Press-Photo 2012”.
