Hungary

From the blu-ray cover:
Adopting the Viennese version of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera, István Gaál, one of the most important filmmakers of Hungarian modernist cinema, returned to his safe haven in his final feature film—classical music and ancient Greek mythology European culture is rooted in. Framing the ancient story sung and depicted with images of nature and landscapes arranged in abstract geometric shapes highlights the universal human experience to be gained from the mythological theme—the desire to overcome mortality through love and art.Read More »

Béla Tarr’s hypnotic parable about the trials of human existence, filmed in thirty shots, is an apparently simple record of a week in the life of the farmer and pálinka distiller Ohlsdorfer. The minimalist drama opens with a brief text about the anecdote that Nietzsche went insane in 1889 in Turin after seeing a coachman brutally beat a horse. The introduction ends with the remark that we do not know what happened to the horse. The Turin Horse (2011) answers that question.Read More »

The story takes place in the turbulent times of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Budapest’s siren is sounding, the city is slowly depopulating. We see a man who may or may not have committed murder. Many board the ship and the man with them. But even here they cannot hide from violence and madness.Read More »

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‘This region for an airman is just a map’, however, whosoever looks closer will discover a thousand secrets of a thousand lives on each Budapest corner or balcony. Memories of peacetime afternoons, family photos, love letters, then bombed houses, tanks driving down deserted streets and decrepit buildings awaiting demolition all flash up for a moment in this lyrical etude by István Szabó, not the first work in his series of filmmaking confessions for Budapest. The story of a city that preserves its past in its buildings and its inhabitants won the grand prix at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 1977.Read More »

An all-woman crate factory’s new fireman installs a hidden camera in the women’s dressing room for the male management’s pleasure, eventually boosting business.Read More »

Ten-year-old Palkó has just moved home to Budapest from Berlin and observes the daily life of an ordinary Hungarian elementary school with confused amazement. Juci, the young teacher just started working there. She is the only one who understands Palkó, as in their own way, they are both suffering from the same, sometimes grotesque educational system.Read More »

On 22 June 1941, Germany and Romania attack Soviet Russia. Several days later, Curzio Malaparte, the Italian writer who would one day pen the novel « Kaputt », a war correspondent for « Corriere de la Sera », arrives in Iasi, in the north of Moldova, on his way to the front, which is nearby. He is incapacitated by a severe allergy and his only chance of recovery is to find a Jewish doctor, an allergologist who had studied in Florence, called Josef Gruber. All his attempts to find him are unsuccessful. While looking for him, Curzio discovers that in Iasi, several days prior to his arrival, a violent anti-Semitic pogrom took place and that a large number of the Jewish citizens of Iasi were deported by train and that Dr Gruber may be among them. In order to find him, Curzio, aided by Guido Sartori, the Italian consul in Iasi, tries to obtain an official warrant to bring Josef Gruber back. Read More »

Like ADOPTION, this 1964 short film by Márta Mészáros explores the themes of broken family bonds; it also offers insight into the origins of the director’s career.

A day in the solitary life of Pista, a single child of divorced parents. The boy skips school and explores the city of Budapest by himself, yet can’t escape an unbearable ennui. Like Mészáros’s ADOPTION, this early short film explores the themes of broken family bonds; it also offers insight into the origins of the director’s career.Read More »

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Essentially a drama about the lives of the Hungarian Hortobagy plains horsemen and peasants, with a slight fictional storyline to hang it all on. The coming of ‘machines’ threatens the way of life of these peoples, and most of them want no contact with tractors or even bicycles. But not everyone agrees.Read More »