Hungary

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 »

Richard of Gloucester uses murder and manipulation to claim England’s throne.Read More »

This acclaimed, multiple-award-winning film centers around a group of young people who meet in a rock pub in Budapest in the summer of 1989 during Hungary’s fleeting celebration of Communism’s fall. This Pynchonesque crew includes two goofy Russian musicians, an engineer who has been reduced to selling kitchen knives, and two girlfriends, English and American, in search of action. After the fun and romance, they must move on, as the mafia and the onset of new nationalist chaos closes in.Read More »

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Shreds and fragments of film poetry that make its own place on the edge of a document film. The film is a college of dialogue between nature, abandoned country, and human fancy.Read More »

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Huszárik’s graduation film was another short entitled Groteszk (Grotesque) in 1963 about a strange train voyage of an artist carrying his own picture.Read More »

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A short documentary depicting the daily lives of old country widows.Read More »

Helén and Jenö are waiting for a child and are desperately searching for an accomodation. They eventually sign a contract with an old lady, Szeréna, who lives in a two-family house. According to the contract, they are to pay a moderate rent and they have to take care of her until her death. After the first weeks, Szeréna accuses the couple of trying to poison her and builds a chicken coop on the balcony with the aim of living off the eggs she herself gathers.Read More »

Haz a Szikiak Alatt (The House Under the Rocks) is considered by many to be Hungarian director Karoly Makk’s masterpiece. Janos Gorbe plays a soldier, sick of heart and mind, who returns to his home after a long and debilitating war. He finds that his wife is dead, and his son is now under the care of his sister-in-law, played by Irene Psota. An embittered hunchback, Psota tends to Gorbe’s wounds and keeps him isolated from the rest of the village, hoping in this way that he will eventually fall in love with her. He doesn’t, and tragedy is the result. One of the hits of the 1958 Venice Film Festival, Haz a Skikiak Alatt was equally well received at the San Francisco Film Festival (between its European and American showings, the film’s running time had been judiciously trimmed by several minutes).Read More »