Hungarian

Quote:
Single factory worker Kata, 43, wants to have a child with her long-time secret lover, a married man called Joska. He doesn’t like the idea. Kata befriends teenage schoolgirl Anna, abandoned by her parents at the age of six. Anna runs away from the local children’s home and moves in with Kata so that she can keep on seeing her boyfriend Sanyi. Kata goes to see Anna’s parents and persuades them to give the young lovers their permission to marry. Through Anna, Kata becomes interested in neglected children and decides to adopt a baby from the children’s home.Read More »

Vera Angi works as a nurse in a hospital after WWII in communist Hungary. Because she speaks up about the terrible conditions in which the nurses and doctors have to work, she’s placed in a six-month education course.Read More »

Synopsis:
Piroska is an overweight, alienated nurse who can’t resist cream-filled pastries. She works in the terminal ward of a hospital; her life is surrounded by death. One day she sets off to find her long-lost childhood friend. While tracing her recollections, she embarks on a paradox-filled voyage within her own memory and the memory of those she encounters.Read More »

Zoltan Fabri’s 1956 Hungarian feature about the persecution of an educator (played for both laughs and great pathos by Ernö Szabó) whose essay about Hannibal and the Punic Wars in a school bulletin is deemed unflattering to the Mussolini regime. A beautifully shot, modest masterpiece which is, as the cliche goes, as timely today as ever.Read More »

While cleaning offices at night, George learns a lot about the employees by examining what they leave behind, carefully choosing his targets, always disillusioned women whom he seduces, methodically taking their money. An artist of manipulation, with a generous dose of humor and the ability to assume different personalities, George begins to work in a psychologist’s practice, where he learns of Hanna, a 30 year-old dancer who was hurt in a car accident and the daughter of a millionaire. The ideal victim if love doesn’t get in the way.Read More »

A young woman leaves a state orphanage to find her mother in this interesting examination of
how the overt repression of women in the older pattern of village life has been replaced by
the more subtle sexual and economic exploitation inherent in the apparently freer existence
of young girls in the contemporary city. A key film from Marta Meszaros.Read More »

From filmjournal.net and torinofilmfest.org

One of the most impressive Hungarian directorial debuts, Ten Thousand Days offers clinching proof that Miklós Jancsó wasn’t the only mid-1960s master offering breathtaking widescreen compositions featuring hundreds of men and horses. Shot by Sándor Sára, then well on his way to cementing his reputation as one of Hungarian cinematography’s greatest visual artists, the film routinely throws up stunning shots: mass wheat scything, dozens of horses crossing a bridge to market (followed shortly afterwards by train wagons crossing the same bridge heading in the opposite direction, a neat visual gag on technological progress), prisoners doing hard labour on a rocky hillside, numerous public festivities crammed with local colour. The aesthetic impact alone makes it’s easy to see why this once had a considerable international reputation, even achieving a commercial release in Britain.Read More »

Hungarian filmmaker Károly Makk was an important figure in the development of Hungarian cinema after WWII. He made his directorial debut in 1954. Prior to that, he attended the Budapest Academy of Film Art and then was an assistant director on Geza von Radvanyi’s Somewhere in Europe. While his films of the ‘60s were well respected in Hungary, Makk’s work did not receive international recognition until 1971, when his Love won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes. Since then, he has gained an international reputation. His 1982 film Another Way was the first Eastern European film to deal directly with gay and lesbian concerns. (Mubi)Read More »

Makk’s haunting, atmospheric and beautifully performed film, brilliantly shot by Janos Toth, captures exactly the fear and uncertainty of the time. It is, above all, a treatise on how such times affect fidelity, faith, illusion, love. It deals specifically with Hungary but has an absolutely universal appeal… completely unsentimental, but catches precisely what its characters face and how they feel…an outstanding film.Read More »