Zoltán Huszárik

Synopsis:
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 »

Synopsis:
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 »

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

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka the one-ideaed Hungarian painter was thought to be crazy by his peers, but he eventually became a significant artist.Read More »

Quote:
Huszárik made two experimental shorts in 1971 and 1976, entitled Tisztelet az öregasszonyoknak/Homage to Old Ladies and A Piacere/As You Like It, respectively. The first is a homage to the old country widows whose husbands died in World War II and live their lives according to daily tasks and regulations until they die (which is mainly inspired by Huszárik’s own mother). The second is a study of death in its various forms, including a gypsy “merry funeral” and stock footage of bombings and concentration camps in WWII.Read More »

Quote:
Adapted from the short stories of Gyula Krúdy, a beloved Proustian author of the Magyars, Szindbád is an autumnal, reflective, and poetic film set during fin de siècle Hungary, and centers on a dying libertine’s thoughts and memories. Although named after the character in One Thousand and One Nights, Szindbad is more of a wilting Casanova. A womanizer and a gourmand, he both regrets and revels in his past pursuits of the flesh and stomach. Counter to the long shot, long take aesthetic that’s the default mode for European art cinema then and now, Huszárik—a graphic artist and painter as well—opts for montage editing. Haptic inserts, rich in sensuality and eroticism, of water droplets, globules of food oil, and blooming flowers, are counterpoised with the film’s melancholic tone channeled through Szindbád. A life lived purely for pleasure never seemed so gloomily romantic.Read More »

This 20 minute experimental short is generally considered to be the start of a new visual style in Hungarian filmmaking. Often called a “film poem” or a “film symphonie”, Huszárik’s masterpiece begins with wild horses, and ends in the slaughterhouse. The film is thought to be an allegory to the human fate.Read More »