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Curators and cultural managers have worked hard to establish a picture of Hungary's arts world for the season, and this should lead to further cooperation, Orsós said.
Much is being done to create a true-to-life picture of the country, not a carbon copy. The main view to organising the festival was to put Hungarian artists into a live crowd and showcase their work "without hand-wringing and emotional complexes".
The festival should raise Hungary's profile and eliminate some of the negative associations people have with the country.
The "narrative" for the festival is modernization and its roots: nothing in the festival is from before the 19th century.
"The decision was to be as fresh as we could stand to be," Orsós says, adding that Hungary has a layer of culture that is "absolutely marketable."
The other narrative for the festival is the fall of the Berlin Wall as the real turn of the century. Separate events will be organised for the theme, including a discussion of the "Pan-European picnic", an event which precipitated the dismantling of the iron curtain, on the last day of the PEN writers' conference, and a conference where journalists will recall what they saw - and didn't see - in Eastern Europe around the time at Washington's Newseum and at the New York Public Library.
Extremely Hungary will also offer a gastronomical map of the country, said Orsós, who once penned a popular restaurant review column for Hungary's biggest broadsheet.
