‘Hungary’ Archives
Sarajevo 2006/2008
When I started this blog just over a year ago, I did so with a long list of ambitions, chief among them being that I was going to keep the promise of its subtitle "a survey of Central and Eastern European cinema" by visiting the Gdynia, Plzeň, Budapest and Sarajevo Film Festivals every year and thereby end up sampling the vast majority of the [...]
Checking the Gate
As highlighted by my last post, this week sees the launch of the 'Check the Gate' festival of recent(ish) Hungarian cinema - and since I've now managed to see six-and-a-half out of the seven features being screened, here's a sneak preview of what's showing. Given that the festival's function is to provide a snapshot of what's been happening in [...]
Check the Gate
At the end of June, the Curzon Mayfair cinema in London, in collaboration with the Hungarian Cultural Centre, is hosting 'Check the Gate', a showcase of new Hungarian films. Thursday 26 June 6.30pm Kontroll (d. Nimród Antal, 2003, 105 mins) Maestro (d. Géza M. Tóth, 2005, 5 mins) Friday 27 June 4pm Just Sex and Nothing Else (Csak szex és [...]
Censorship as a Creative Force: Screentalk
Last night I attended the keenly-awaited Censorship as a Creative Force Screentalk discussion at London's Barbican Arts Centre, in which Jiří Menzel, István Szabó and Agnieszka Holland (an eleventh-hour replacement for Andrzej Wajda) discussed their experience of censorship under the various totalitarian régimes under which they had to spend [...]
Electra My Love
Szerelmem, Elektra Hungary, 1974, colour, 71 mins There was always something inevitable about Miklós Jancsó's Electra My Love (a literal translation of the Hungarian Szerelmem, Elektra, though it's also known as Elektreia). In the films from The Confrontation (Fényes szelek, 1968) to Red Psalm (Még kér a nép, 1971), he had been refining [...]
Red Psalm
Még kér a nép Hungary, 1971, colour, 84 minsCurrent DVD availability makes it easy to trace Miklós Jancsó's career from his second feature Cantata (Oldás és kötes, 1963) to his sixth Silence and Cry (Csend és kiáltás, 1967) inclusive. But then there's a hiatus, with The Confrontation (Fényes szelek, 1968) and the Italian-made La [...]
Silence and Cry
Csend és kiáltás Hungary, 1967, black and white, 76 minsBoth made and set in the same year as The Red and the White (Csillagosok, katonák) - 1967 and 1919 respectively - Silence and Cry returns to the puszta - that great flat Hungarian plain stretching out to infinity - that Miklós Jancsó made such an indelible part of The Round-Up [...]
The Red and the White
Csillagosok, katonák Hungary/USSR, 1967, black and white, 90 minsSuperficially, it's easy to see why the Soviet Union thought that Miklós Jancsó would be the man to direct a Hungarian-Soviet co-production commemorating the October Revolution's 50th anniversary. With My Way Home, made just eight years after the 1956 uprising, he'd portrayed a [...]
Jancsó in London
Last Friday evening I went to the Curzon Mayfair cinema in central London for an ultra-rare screening of Miklós Jancsó's masterpiece The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, 1965) in the company of its director - who, it turned out, was watching the film for the first time in nearly thirty years. As promised, it was indeed in 35mm, albeit in an old [...]
The Round-Up
Szegénylegények Hungary, 1965, black and white, 87 minsIt's appropriate that Miklós Jancsó took inspiration for more than one film (Cantata, 1963; Allegro Barbaro, 1979) from the work of his great compatriot Béla Bartók, as in many ways he was attempting to achieve the same with Hungarian cinema as Bartók did with Hungarian music. Though [...]