‘Hungary’ Archives
My Way Home
Így jöttem Hungary, 1964, black and white, 102 minsMiklós Jancsó's third feature My Way Home is a key transitional work in his career. Although still not quite past the embryonic stage, his mature style is now clearly visible, and he's already managed to ditch the Antonioni influence that cast a long shadow over its predecessor Cantata [...]
Cantata
Oldás és kötés Hungary, 1963, black and white, 90 minsMiklós Jancsó’s second feature is, to all practical intents and purposes, his debut, since he has all but disowned his first decade’s output - a large number of documentaries plus a 1958 feature The Bells Have Gone To Rome (A harangok Rómában mentek). Although embryonic glimmerings [...]
Miklós Jancsó on DVD
To mark the release next Monday of Second Run's long-awaited DVD of Miklós Jancsó's The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, 1965), here's an overview of the surprisingly impressive number of Jancsó DVDs currently in circulation - provided you don't mind shopping around Britain, the US, France, Italy and Hungary. I'll be looking at many of these in [...]
Censorship as a Creative Force
In late April, the Barbican Arts Centre in London is hosting a week-long season, Censorship as a Creative Force, in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute, the Czech Centre and the Hungarian Cultural Centre.I've already booked tickets for the two highlights - a panel discussion on April 25 with the extraordinarily impressive line-up of [...]
Six capsules
Here's a quick round-up of films seen recently that were either reviewed in more depth elsewhere, or which I'm unlikely to get round to writing up in full. Katyń (d. Andrzej Wajda, 2007, Poland) A good film from a director who's made several great ones. The reason for my slight disappointment is twofold. Firstly, no mere film could possibly [...]
Miklós Jancsó – UK tour details
March 17 sees Second Run's long-awaited DVD release of Miklós Jancsó's masterpiece The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, 1965), and to mark the occasion, the 86-year-old Hungarian master is coming to London, Cambridge and Edinburgh to give a series of interviews and presentations.The schedule is as follows:Friday 14th March – 6.30pm Curzon [...]
Derek Malcolm’s Century of Cinema
While researching something else (as is always the way), I stumbled upon former Guardian critic Derek Malcolm's A Century of Films - a survey of his personal Top 100, with a robust defence of each film's inclusion. And on glancing down the list again for the first time since 2001, I notice that nine of his choices came from central and eastern [...]
Best Foreign Film Oscar longlist announced
According to the Hollywood Reporter, a record 63 films are on the initial longlist for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. The full list is here, and these are the Central and Eastern European submissions: Azerbaijan: Caucasia (d. Farid Gumbatov) Bosnia and Herzegovina: It's Hard to Be Nice/Teško je biti fin (d. Srđan Vuletić) - [...]
István Gaál RIP
I was very sorry to hear about the death of Hungarian director István Gaál (1933-2007), because I'd only just discovered his work via Roots (Gyökerek), a marvellous three-part television documentary about the composer Béla Bartók, made in 2002 - which has just jumped to the top of my "to review" list. The Falcons (Magasiskola, 1970) is [...]
Iván Darvas RIP
I was out of the country at the time, so I initially missed this Guardian obituary of the Hungarian actor Iván Darvas (1925-2007) when it was published on 5 September - and even that was nearly two months late, as he actually died on 3 June, before this blog was even launched. I only knew Darvas from his lead roles in the two Károly Makk films [...]