The Andrea Negrelli Collection at the Blinken OSA Archivum
Andrea Negrelli donated her family's photo and film archive to the Blinken OSA Archivum in 2024, to ensure its preservation and make it open for research. The collection, spanning from the late 19th century to the 1990s, provides insight into the lives of her family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Hungary. Notable figures within the collection include her parents, film and stage actress Mária Deésy, and graphic artist Béla Negrelli, and several relatives involved in the arts and film world of the 1930s and 1940s. The collection consists of photographs, movies, including Andrea Negrelli’s film academy project from 1972, and textual records, offering a rich personal and historical collection. The archive is currently being processed and will soon be available for research.
Andrea Negrelli, a Hungarian-born French film director, editor, and writer, earned her degree at the Budapest Film Academy in 1972. In 1973 she moved to France, where she works as filmmaker, editor and writer. In 2023-2024, she donated her family archives, consisting predominantly of photos, but also of films and other records to Blinken OSA Archivum, with the intention of sharing her Central European family’s private histories with the public. The first photos in the collection date back to the 1870s, to the Sauervein and Castiglione families of Győr, where her mother’s family came from.
The donor’s father, Béla Negrelli was an aspiring actor and director, later a graphic artist, whose works were published in Muzsika, Parlando, Ifjú Zenebarát, Magyar Zene and other periodicals. He also played roles in films directed by Sándor Simó and Péter Gothár.
Andrea Negrelli's mother, Mária Deésy, née Mária Castiglione Haris (1919-1998), was a film and theatre actress who in the early 1940s played with Gizi Bajor, Klára Tolnay and Artúr Somplay, among others. Between 1954 and 1976 she played leading roles in several famous theatre companies. Later she also worked as a sculptor.
Notable members of Andrea Negrelli’s family include Alois (Luigi) Negrelli (1799-1858) architect-engineer of the Suez Canal; Géza (also Victor) Sauervein (18??-1876), a printing house owner from Győr; and Henrik Castiglione (1885-1960), film producer, owner of the Corso Film Theatre in Budapest, and author of the first Film Lexikon in Hungary.
Following the deaths of her parents, Andrea, their only child, inherited the family archive and relocated it to France.
Most of the photos in the collection portray the mother, with whom the donor recorded an audio interview, providing commentary to the images of the family album. The material also includes film footage of the parents' wedding, and official documents and certificates. Some of the photos in the collection were signed by famous Hungarian actors and actresses of the time.
The donation, preserved and pre-arranged by Andrea Negrelli, offers a unique insight into family life in fin-de-siècle Hungary, and of the 1920s to 1990s. The photographs, both paper prints and negatives, arrived at OSA in meticulously arranged and pre-processed fashion. Many of the photographs are of superior quality, produced by cinematographers and professional photographers of the time.
Besides the photographs and documents, the collection also contains Andrea Negrelli’s own film, “We and Myself” on celluloid about her family.
Following digitization and processing, the unique photo collection in hard copies will be available in the Research Room of Blinken OSA, while some selected items will become accessible online via the Archivum’s Catalog, within the fonds HU OSA 485 Andrea Negrelli Photo and Film Collection.
Related Content
