One day is much like another: a man’s day, somewhere on the outskirts of the city, in a dilapidated room. The torment of getting up, trembling hands searching among empty one-liter bottles, a face snarling back from the mirror, the escape, a tattered jacket over his pajamas, a two-kilogram loaf of bread, burning liquor down his throat… At first glance, this day is no different from those that came before…
Tag: HUNGARY
August 1962, and one day is much like the next. La Dolce Vita starring Anita Ekberg is playing in cinemas and apartment block janitor uncle Simon hosts the in-house morning radio show with news, advice and music. The Communist Youth League is organizing a competition. The winning team of the Talent Show can take part in the World Youth Meeting far away in Helsinki. Naturally, the winners have already been decided. This musical satire built on reworked hits and gags parodies both the Kádár system and those who look back on it with nostalgia.
The elderly Veronika who lives alone has two resolves. The first is to collect sufficient money through her own labour, to be able to visit her only living relative, her son, in London. The second is to start cultivating her long-neglected vineyard. The lady, who has suffered greatly over the years, works with stubborn will and quiet serenity to achieve the goals she has set herself. Imre Gyöngyössy and Barna Kabay’s lyrical, documentary-style film received numerous awards at international film festivals.
The protagonist of this psycho-thriller taking place in picturesque surroundings is a crazed station-master living in a dull village in the middle of nowhere. In both visual and audio forms, the suffocating short effectively juxtaposes the sunlit, peaceful landscape with the lunatic ramblings of the deranged man gradually rising to a wheezing roar. Post-impressionist static idylls and genre pictures of brilliant tones are counterpointed by nervously pulsating sequences moving at warp speed. This first short made by Tibor Bánóczki as a student of the animation department comprises oil paintings on cel sheets.
Thirty-year-old Irén dreams of a separate apartment so she can move in with her lover, the married Attila. Hope is sparked by one of the man’s acquaintances, the construction contractor Hevesi, but in order to apply for the larger apartment, she must first enter into a marriage of convenience with the young Gábor. Irén takes out a loan on her modest kindergarten teacher salary, wanders through the mazes of socialist bureaucracy, while Hevesi and her nominal husband harass her with sexual offers, and by the time the day of moving in is within reach, it turns out that Attila doesn’t want to leave his family after all.
A young boy strays through a wrought-iron gateway into an overgrown garden filled with insects and birds. Amidst the sculptures of Antiquity, he glimpses a mermaid-like woman in a wheelchair and begins to follow her. The film consisting of engraving-like drawings is a surrealistic coming of age tale played out on the boundary of this world and the realm of myths.
The film made for the centenary of the birth of poet Endre Ady is set in the golden age of peace before the outbreak of the First World War. By depicting the silence preceding the suffocating storm at the beginning of the century, the director expresses the public mood of his own time in impactful animated images.
Péter Tímár, visionary developer of a unique filmmaking perspective in his graphics and effects period, directed this short in the experimental film group of Balázs Béla Studio, in which he investigates human sight through five topics: anatomy, photo-sensitivity, contour, refraction and resonance. The result is a fascinating experimental film packed with cinematic reflections far removed from scientific demonstration and didactic intent.