“There are in life faces which, at first sight, appear unremarkable, but when seen through the camera or when projected on screen they become extraordinary. Behind every expression lies an entire life, a destiny,” Ferenc Grunwalsky once declared. While making a sociological documentary, the director-cinematographer came across a young mother who so caught his attention that he decided to devote an entire portrait film to her. In the absence of dialogue, the most minute expressions become the film’s ‘protagonists’, and instead of explanatory narration and captions the power of imagery prevails.
Tag: HUNGARY
With his monumental ‘film fresco’ Ferenc Kósa erected a monument to the peasant revolt led by György Dózsa (16th century). Although under the Marxist interpretation of history of the period the revolt was frequently simplified down to an early example of ‘class struggle’, in the screenplay of Ferenc Kósa and Sándor Csoóri the depiction of historical events bears the universally valid formulation of questions about revolution and violence, while the figure of Dózsa – thanks also to the characterization of Ferenc Bessenyei – takes on a more lifelike and human aspect.
The film tells the true story of the Lenkey-Hussar battalion. It depicts naturally the obsessed and ill-weighed assertion of home sickness and patriotism thus revoking the memory of 1848. Obeying the pressure of the Empire the Hussar regiment of Paál Farkas and his companions has to be stationed in a small Polish town. Upon receiving the news on the revolution and freedom fight in Hungary, the Hussar Korsós attempts to desert.
During a film course lead by Yvette Biró at the Hungarian Academy of Drama and film in 1995, the director students were shown a black-and-white photo taken by Lucien Herve in 1952, and they were given the task of writing a short film based on it. Three women are standing at the outskirts of a village, looking out of the picture in the same direction. This six-minute one-shot film shows what the Herve photo does not.
A lyrical and yet at the same time passionate ‘situation report’ on the living conditions of Hungarian Gypsies. With this, his first significant work, Sándor Sára, who went on to become one of the most influential figures in Hungarian film as both cinematographer and director, aimed not only to document but also to take a standpoint on this critical topic. The exposition of the film determines the context: newspaper articles and socio-photos reporting on the plight of the Roma, listing numbers and statistics, and in the follow-on Sára depicts the problem through motion pictures.
A focus on the tormented lives of intellectuals who failed to protest recent troubles in their homeland. Jancsó emphasizes highly evocative and ambiguous imagery over dialog or exposition as he – through visually fascinating imagery – depicts the painful, stunted lives of Hungary’s intellectuals who have remained silent and ineffectual during various political crises.
In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all. Gábor Bódy’s film is a thoroughly experimental work, constantly surprising and disorienting the viewer, posing serious questions, with a unique style of expression and perspective.
Csöre is a 7-year-old orphan girl living in unbearable circumstances in rural Hungary during the 1920s. The poverty-stricken Dudás couple only take in the little ‘waif’ in return for the placement fee they receive from the orphanage, while the wealthy Szennyes family use her as a domestic servant. Fate is equally hard on her in both places. It would appear that there is no end to the humiliations the innocent child has to bear. László Ranódy adapts for film the classic novel by Zsigmond Móricz, with shattering effect.