An allegorical short film about the price of freedom. A vast, leafy tree stands in the centre of the field. One ambitious apple on a branch does everything to ripen as soon as possible and break away from the branch that ‘holds it back’, while these restless efforts are viewed with profound contempt by the withered apples around it. The young fruit’s efforts are finally rewarded and while the brief moment of freefall induces euphoria, it ends up crushed by the laws of physics.
Tag: HUNGARY
KASTÉLYOK LAKÓI shows the clash between old structures and Hungary’s socialist present. “In 1966, I made the documentary KASTÉLYOK LAKÓI about five castles in Gödöllő that used to be the Habsburgs’ royal residence. When I filmed there, parts of the building had been repurposed, converted into an old people’s home and a Russian barrack. Everything was in a very run-down state. Dilapidated palaces in which old, confused people lived who still had their own opinions about the world and fateful stories to tell. And behind them, one can still see the baroque facades and snow-white fireplaces in the film.” – Judit Elek.
A quality war film does not necessarily need spectacular aerial dogfights and bombed cityscapes. Only those movies have truly something to say that go beyond the crack of rifle fire to present personal dramas as well. Ferenc Kósa’s unusual, pacifist war film depicts the hell of carnage in all its senselessness. Characters of this gaunt, tight-lipped story wander through a beautiful landscape seeking their own truth or just the possibility of survival. The film is all the more memorable for the cinematography of Sándor Sára, the powerful screenplay and the acting of, for instance, Péter Haumann.
“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.
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.