On October 23, the world will commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. The events of those fateful weeks are of course well known: protests that began in solidarity with striking workers in Poland turned into more widespread demands for reforms in the Hungarian government — and for some, those demands included an end to communist control. The Soviet forces stationed in Hungary eventually acted to put down the growing protests — and the rest is tragic history. Thousands of Hungarians were killed, many more were arrested or purged, and tens of thousands fled the country; although the uprising would be quelled, nothing could ever be the same again. Throughout Western Europe and beyond, leftist political movements split over the question of Hungary; the Soviets’ brutal repression was the final proof, if one were needed, of the bankruptcy of Moscow-dominated communism. Movements began to spring up that rejected the enforced orthodoxy of the Old Left. Welcome to the 60s…. From October 27 to November 15, the Walter Reade Theater will present three different (but of course related) Hungarian film series. REMEMBERING ‘56 will feature a number of important Hungarian films that have portrayed the Uprising itself or explored its consequences — themes that inspired masterworks such as Time Stands Still or Father. THE CURRENTS OF HISTORY: A TRIBUTE TO MIKLÓS JANCSÓ will be a seven-film salute to Hungary’s greatest director, who we hope will be with us for some of these screenings. Finally, NEW CINEMA FROM HUNGARY will help introduce Hungary’s newest generation of film artists. This series is presented in collaboration with the Film Society at Lincoln Center, the Magyar Filmunió in Budapest.

Resistance and Rebirth:

Hungarian Cinema, 50 Years after ‘56

October 27 – November 16

REMEMBERING ‘56

Father / Apa

István Szabó, 1966; 95m

Szabó’s first mature work, Father, along with Miklós Jancsó The Round-Up heralded the arrival of a revitalized Hungarian cinema. Takó Bence (beautifully played by András Balint) never actually knew his father, who died at the war’s end; but that hasn’t stopped Bence from creating a rich biography for him. Whether it’s running resistance missions with a progressive priest or receiving the adulation of May Day marchers, Bence’s father was at the center of it all — or at least that’s how Bence imagines it. Cunningly mixing a broad array of cinematic styles, Father brilliantly and often humorously captures a moment in which the various myths of the past give way to a more soberly observed present. Described by Szabó as “the autobiography of a generation,” Father was one of the first to include actual footage from the ’56 Uprising —and furthermore to depict those events as a key to understanding contemporary Hungarian youth.

Fri Oct 27: 2; Mon Oct 30: 7:15

A TRIBUTE TO MIKLÓS JANCSÓ

The Red and the White / Csillagosok, Katonak

Miklós Jancsó, Hungary/USSR, 1967; 90m

At the end of WWI, thousands of Hungarian soldiers are prisoners behind Russian lines; the new Bolshevik authorities offer them freedom if they will join the “Reds” in their struggle against the “White” forces still loyal to the Tsar. Some join up out of socialist solidarity, others for the chance to loot the newly “liberated” estates. The Red and the White is the first work in which one can experience the full effect of what became Jancsó’s trademark visual style: extraordinarily long takes complemented by intricate camera movements and dense frames with multiple layers of action — the perfect incarnation of a world in which instability is the rule and treachery the norm. The Red and the White is a haunting, disturbing portrait of a world choked by war.

Fri Oct 27: 4; Mon Oct 30: 9:15

NEW CINEMA FROM HUNGARY

Moscow Square / Moszkva Ter

Ferenc Török, 2001; 88m

The release of Ferenc Török’s debut Moscow Square seemed to announce the arrival of a new sensibility in Hungarian cinema, one that corresponded to a generation that had entirely grown up in the post-communist era. It’s April, 1989; Petya, Kigler, Ságodi and their friends spend their evenings hanging around the clock tower in Moscow Square, while all around them the old regime is on the verge of collapse. Everyone feels that something is about to happen: the question is whether they make it happen or just wait for whatever’s coming. For some like Petya and his girlfriend Zsófi, the new world means getting out of Hungary and getting to know the wide world. Few films have more effectively captured that sense of life on the eve a momentous political and social transformation— that unsettling combination of giddy optimism for the future and creeping fear of the unknown. Török cast his film largely with unknowns either from local high schools or the Academy of Drama.

Fri Oct 27: 6; Tue Oct 31: 3: 25

REMEMBERING ‘56

Refuge England

Robert Vas, U.K.; 1959; 27m

Hungary, 1956: Our Revolution

Mark Kidel, U.K., 2006; 60m

Born in Hungary in 1931, Robert Vas escaped to England after the 1956 Uprising; taking advantage of the British Film Institute’s Experimental Film Fund, Vas created Refuge England, a fictional account of a Hungarian refugee’s first day in London. Shot by Walter Lassally, the film captures the man’s loneliness and wonder, as well as his fears and hopes, as he attempts to take in the sights and sounds of his new home. Praised by Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson, Refuge England was included in one of their “Free Cinema” programs at London’s National Film Theater. Mark Kidel’s Hungary 1956: OurRevolution, co-produced by BBC and ARTE, explores the 1956 Uprising from a variety of viewpoints: from those who took part in the actual street demonstrations of course, but also from the perspective of the Soviet soldiers sent in to put them down. Politicians, students, factory
workers, as well as employees from Radio Free Europe (who encouraged the rebels from their studios in Munich) offer their memories and impressions, as well as their thoughts on what they did — or should have done — fifty years ago. The film includes archival footage both from official and unofficial sources, as well as some amazing new material from Russia that has only recently been discovered. A terrific, and provocative, introduction to the major events of the 20th century’s watershed moments.

Sat Oct 28: 4; Mon Oct 30: 1

A TRIBUTE TO MIKLÓS JANCSÓ

Electra, My Love / Szerelmem, Elektra

Miklós Jancsó, 1974; 76m

The films of Miklós Jancsó’s, with their fascinating choreography of characters and camera movement, always had a clear affinity to dance, but nowhere was this tendency more visible, nor more remarkable than in his version of Euripides’s drama. The extraordinary Mari Töröcsik plays Electra, who continues to challenge the usurper of her father’s throne, Aegisthos, and claiming it
for her brother, Orestes, long after everyone else has come to accept his power as a fait accompli. Composed of only twelve shots, the film is a constant visual and aural feast, with a constant flow of horse riders galloping across the horizon, peasant girls in traditional costumes or stark naked, or rows of young men cracking whips in synchronized precision filling each frame. “Electra, My Love might be Jancsó’s Hair, an experimental theater piece where the here-and now of Hungary and the Soviet block emerge transparently from the Greek tragedy, and revolution is always in the air. Electra tells ruler Aegisthos ‘it is not you who needs destroying, but the system you built up,’ and the delivery is, accordingly, incantory.”

– Fernando F. Croce, Cinepassion

Sat Oct 28: 6:15; Mon Oct 30: 2:45

NEW CINEMA FROM HUNGARY

Johanna

Kornél Mundruczó, 2005; 86m

One of the most hotly debated films at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, Johanna begins as the victims of a massive traffic accident are brought into a hospital emergency room. Among the casualties is a young drug addict, Johanna, who sneaks into the pharmacy and overdoses. Saved by the almost miraculous efforts of a young doctor, Johanna fully recovers but has no memory of her past life; instead, she stays to help others by working as a nurse. Yet Johanna’s rather distinctive ways of providing aid and comfort to her patients leads to a confrontation with the hospital’s staff and doctors— including her savior. Orsi Tóth in the title role is superb: she has an otherworldly quality that makes her seem ethereal even when she’s at her most physical. Much of the film was shot in Hungary’s National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, a looming, oppressive structure, the perfect image for an unfeeling bureaucracy that director Mundruczó uses as an effective counterpoint to all the passions racing through this moral fable.

Sat Oct 28: 8:15 (plays again in November)

REMEMBERING ‘56

Recsk

Géza Böszörményi & Livia Gyarmathy, 1989; 230m

In 1950, just two years after the ascension of the Hungarian communists to power, a prison camp was set up to intern political dissidents —including independent labor leaders, socialists and even communists who questioned the party’s Stalinist mold. Torture, beatings, psychological and physical humiliation were routine events — not to mention the suffering caused by lack of proper heating, poor nutrition and disease. Then, in 1953, the camp was abruptly closed; those who survived were sent back to their former lives, and the very existence of the camp at Recsk become one of the regime’s darkest secrets, the epitome of the arbitrary, brutal power against which Hungarians would soon revolt. Thirty years later, filmmakers Geza Böszörményi (who had been interned at Recsk) and Livia Gyarmathy interviewed as many “veterans” of Recsk as they could find — not only prisoners, but also guards and even the officials responsible for sending people there. The result was this extraordinary work, a richly, terrifyingly detailed portrait of a prison camp that mirrored the contemporary tensions and divisions in Hungarian life and politics. Winner of the European Film
Award for Best Documentary (1989).

Sun Oct 29: 1

NEW CINEMA FROM HUNGARY

White Palms / Fehér Tenyér

Szabolcs Hajdú, 2006; 103m

Winner of several awards at this year’s Hungarian Film Week, White Palms is based on director Hajdú’s own youthful experiences as an aspiring gymnast. Miklós Dongó (played by the director’s brother, Miklós, a professional gymnast) arrives in Canada to begin work as a coach and trainer for young gymnasts. His career cut short by injury, Miklós is flooded with memories of his own childhood as he starts to work with the talented but confrontational Kyle (played by Olympic medalist Kyle Shewfelt). Miklós sees much of himself in the young man — yet his efforts to perfect Kyle’s skills run up against his own competitive feelings and disappointment in his own career. Avoiding the typical “sports narrative,”with its predictable focus on failure and success, White Palms instead immerses the viewer in the very special world of gymnastics, a kind of secret society with its own rules and conventions, where athletes train endless hours to perform routines that barely last minutes.

Sun Oct 29: 5:30; Tue Oct 31: 1

NEW CINEMA FROM HUNGARY

Dealer

Benedek Fliegauf, 2005; 135m

Dealer tells the uncompromising story of a day in the life of a drug dealer. His clients include the leader of a religious sect, a friend who needs a final fix, a former lover who claims to have had his child, a student, and a black marketeer. Using long sinuous camera movements to narrate his story, Fliegauf brings us into a kind of sensual contact with his protagonist and his daily routine. According to the director, “It was important to create a kind of hypnotic atmosphere because the film takes place not in Budapest, but in an imaginary city with an almost spiritual atmosphere. This necropolis is the actual main character of the film. As the film unfolds, the viewer gradually gets the impression that the protagonist is actually suspended between life and death; the other characters are ghosts, strange zombies condemned to follow the dealer's suffering behind rigid, marionette-like masks. The dealer's personal tragedy gradually unveils a kind of mosaic.”

Sun Oct 29: 7:45; Mon Oct 30: 4:30

Daniel Takes A Train

Pál Sandor, 1984; 93 min.

Sandor’s masterpiece, screeened at the 1983 Cannes Festival, focuses on three short days in the lives of two teenagers, Daniel and Gyuri, who in the final weeks of 1956 decide to escape to the West. Daniel hopes to meet up with his girlfriend Mariann, who fled with her family some weeks earlier; for ex-soldier Gyuri, the trip could be a chance to settle the score with his father, a former communist official now working as a mechanic. In wonderfully realized scenes of overcrowded trains and border hotels, Sandor creates a rich panorama of ’56 refugees, with thir contradictions, naïve dreams and hopes, as well as their continuing fights and rivalries that mirror the political situation for those they’ve left behind.


Tribute to Miklós Jancsó


Red Psalm


Miklós Jancsó, 1972; 87 min.
“Perhaps the most ecstatic fusion of political and formal radicalism in the 40 years since Dovzhenko’s Earth.”—J. Hoberman, Film Comment, Sept.-Oct. 2006
On a vast, flat plain in the Hungarian hinterlands a mass of peasant farmers have risen in revolt against the local landowners. The political authorities, troops of soldiers, and even the clergy come out to try to convince the peasants to return to their homes, but they’ll have none of it; their rebellion, expressed through communal dancing and singing, can no longer be so easily put down. By the time he made Red Psalm, Jancsó had already moved beyond even the whispers of storyline and plot that had anchored his earlier features; the visual splendor of each frame is at times overwhelming, as the combination of movement, sound and color becomes the expression of pure emotion. Containing only 26 shots over the course of its 87 minutes, Red Psalm is perhaps the most formally elegant of Jancso’s works.

The Round-Up

Miklós Jancsó, 1965; 90 min.

The film that established Jancso’s international reputation, The Round-Up is set a few years after the collapse of Louis Kossuth’s 1848 uprising against the Austrian Hapsburg monarchy. Hungarian policemen loyal to the crown take a large group of peasants prisoner; among those they’re holding the police are certain that there are rebels and Kossuth loyalists to be found---but they have no way of determining who they are. Thus begins a haunting, almost ritualistic process whereby the authorities try to set up traps and ruses to have the rebels reveal themselves—or just to be betrayed by the others. The first film in which Jancso’s trademark visual style—long takes, deep spaces and a constantly roving camera—reached full expression, The Round-Up offers a harrowing vision of a world completely unmoored; characters enter shots as friends and leave as enemies, the threat of betrayal the only thing of which one can be sure.



The Lord’s Lantern in Budapest


Miklós Jancsó, 1999: 103 min.


After an absence of seven years from feature film production, Miklós Jancsó returned to the forefront of Hungarian cinema with this madcap, totally unexpected ramshackle comedy featuring two of Hungary’s most popular performers, Zoltán Mucsi and Péter Scherer. Kapa ( Mucsi) and Pepe (Scherer) are two grave diggers from Budapest. Or perhaps they’re actually nouveau-riche lawyers. Or possibly terrorists. Whatever they are, they seem to be shadowed by two very distinguished older gentlemen (Mikós Jancsó and his longtime screenwriter, Gyula Hernádi), who seem unable to decide what should happen next.
“Dear Viewer, do you ever reflect upon what the worls is like? You do? Oh, please don’t. Live your life . Enjoy every day...with the exception of man, every animal knows that the most important thing about life is to enjoy it. Well, this film of ours will help you do so.”—Miklós Jancsó, press notes for The Lord’s Lantern in Budapest

Winter Wind

Miklós Jancsó, 1969; 80 min.

A co-production with France, composed of only 13 shots, Winter Wind explores a hidden corner of history as a means of casting a light on an entire era. In the mid-1930s, soon after the assassination of the Yugoslav King Alexander in Marseille, a group of Croatian anarchists involved in that plot cross the dense forests at the northern border of Yugoslavia in an effort to seek refuge in Hungary—which has secretly been providing them aid. Their leader, Marko (Jacques Charrier), has become something of a legend of the resistance; his violent, frequently unpredictable behavior, however, has now made him a liability to the movement, and the Hungarians signal that they’d rather not have him on their side of the border. The Round-Up and The Red and the White both avoid focusing on single protagonists, constantly shifting our attention just as we create some kind of connection with a character. Here, Jancso concentrates on Marko, as he begins to sense that his world is collapsing all around him.


God Walks Backwards

Miklós Jancsó, 1990; 95 min.
In the late ‘80s/ early 90’s, Jancsó made a series of films that explored the use of television imagery as means of making his legendary shots even more visually complex. Frequently positioning monitors within his frames—sometimes several within one shot—it was if he were attempting to create a montage counterpoint within the frame itself. Perhaps the most remarkable of these films was God Walks Backwards, an eerie prophecy of the impending collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of Gorbachev made several months before the actual coup itself. Waiting for a film they’re working on to start up again, two members of the production wander around a seemingly deserted mansion, watching news reports of the unfolding events in Moscow and the assassination (!) of Mikhail Gorbachev. Other characters weave in and out, wondering aloud about the implications of all this for Hungary while the air is filled with bits of documents obviously being shredded at a manic pace. Along with his good friend Béla Tarr’s later Satantango, God Walks Backwardsis offers a provocative fresco on the end of communism.


Whooping Cough


Péter Gárdos, 1987; 91 min.

Tomi and Annamari are delighted when their parents tell them that they don’t have to go to school. Father returns home and proudly announces that he’s slapped the insufferable Party prig who tormented him at work. Grandma comes home from shopping, and discovers that there are two bullet holes in the loaf of bread she’s been carrying. Yes, it’s 1956 and the uprising has broken out in Budapest and all over Hungary, and suddenly it’s every man and women for themselves. Winner of the top prize at the Chicago Flm Festival as well as a host of other international awards, Péter
Gárdos’s WHOOPING COUGH takes a decidedly less reverential tone to its depiction of the events of ’56, offering a wry, black-humored look as what happens to one family when suddenly from one day to the next ts world is turned upside down.

Twenty Hours

Zoltán Fábri, 1965; 120 min.
After the shock of ’56, cultural policies began to ease up somewhat in the Sixties; while censorship remained, filmmakers began to broach a number of previously forbidden subjects, including the Uprising. Veteran director Zoltán Fábri, whose works continually pushed the envelope as to what was permissible, was one of the first to take up the challenge with Twenty Hours. Assigned to write an article about contemporary village life, a reporter suddenly finds himself at the scene of a murder investigation. He manages to uncover a sordid, tragic story of four friends, all of whom were enthusiastic partisans of the founding of socialist Hungary, but whose political paths began to diverge when the reality of the situation set in. Although never openly mentioned, it was certainly clear to Hungarian audiences that the moment the tensions came to a head was precisely in ’56, with all the too-well known consequences. Fábri employs a complex flashback narrative, moving between past and present to suggest perhaps not so much a contrast as a continuity of the issues addressed in the film.

Diary for My Mother and Father



Márta Mészáros, 1990; 120 min.

The third part of Mészáros’s loose trilogy of postwar Hungary, Diary for My Mother and Father begins with the lead character, Juli, returning home from Moscow weeks after the Uprising has been put down. The daughter of communist intelligentsia, Juli soon encounters reactions ranging from the complete loss of faith in the regime to cautious gratitude that the Soviets arrived before things got out of hand; she also learns about many friends and others who have simply “voted with their feet” and fled the country. She tries to find herself a place in this deeply torn society, but she never feels quite at home anywhere or with anyone. Mészáros brilliantly captures that feeling of a an enormous political void left in the wake of ’56 for a then-emerging generation that still felt a strong commitment to a vision of a better, more just world but had now lost faith in the instrument, the Communist Party, in which they and especially their parents had placed so much faith and given so much of their lives.

Dallas Pashamende




Robert-Adrian Pejo, 2005; Hungary/Romania/Austria, 93 min.

“Dallas” is the name that the inhabitants have given to a ramshackle shanty town located next door to a garbage dump, the home to a thick goulash of Hungarians, Romanians and specially Romany (formerly known as Gypsies), all of whom despite loud confrontations and chest-thumping actually get along reasonably well. Into the mix one day arrives Radu, born of Roma parents who left the community and moved to town.
Now a schoolteacher, Radu has returned to carry out a promise to his father—to bury him in Dallas. But trying to come back into the fold—even when you’re dead—proves trickier than Radu might have imagined, and soon he realizes that his stay in Dallas might take longer than expected—a prospect not entirely unacceptable to Radu, especially once he gets a look at his childhood sweetheart Oana. A rare look at the Roma people that’s not merely sociological, Robert-Adrian Pejo’s Dallas Pashamende gives a vibrant, full-blooded portrait of complex, many-layered community that happily avoids stereotypes or simple moralizing.


Vagabond

György Szomjas, 2003; 102 min.
After having run away from his orphanage, Karesz takes up with a gang of street kids, living off cleaning car windows and petty crime. One day he spots Zsófi, and decides to follow her; she leads him to the “Dance House,” a place where young people gather to play and dance to traditional folk music. Karesz feels drawn to the music and to the people who make it; many are Hungarians who’ve moved to Budapest from Transylvania or Serbia. The music and the community formed from it give Karesz a focus and a direction, as he enthusiastically takes up percussion. But the lure and threat of the streets is still there, and it’s not too long before his old gang mates come calling.
One of Hungary’s most finest filmmakers, György Szomjas developed in earlier works such as Bald Dog Rock or Mr. Universe a scrappy, vibrant style that perfectly blends fiction and documentary that is on brilliant display in Vagabond. Discovering the existence of this “underground” music scene—Szomjas calls it “a progressive branch of popular culture”—he fashioned a story a means of documenting the scene and some of its most remarkable personalities, resulting in a fascinating journey into a side of contemporary Hungarian culture rarely seen by outsiders or by Hungarians themselves.


After the Day Before

Attila Janisch, 2004; 119 min.

“With After the Day Before, director Attila Janisch has crafted a work of mesmerizing mystery that audaciously dismantles familiar representations of time and space. At the outset, a middle-aged stranger (Tibor Gáspár) arrives in the countryside and wanders from house to house. speaking to sphinx-like residents whose stories offer only dead ends. He roams the narrow paths of the village on a broken bicycle, venturing into the wheat fields and down to the creek. Over the course of his surreal travels—which are languidly paced and presented out of chronological order—the man learns that a youg girl has been murdered….The camera work is genuinely disturbing: slow, creeping zooms and retreating tracking shots move over a lush, green landscapee that is rendered terrifying by an overpowering atmosphere of foreboding and menace. Occasional haunting point-of-view shots put us in the lost and confused mind of the wanderer, while close-ups transform everyday objects into keys that could potentially unlock the film’s enigmas. An incomparable and devastating cinematic experience.”—Dimitrti Eipides, 2004 Toronto International Film Festival Catalog



KONTROLL



Nimród Antal, 2004; 105 min.

“The first work by a director who is clearly gifted and who has found a way to make a full-bore action movie on a limited budget.”—Roger Ebert
A slapstick tale of redemption set in the Budapest subway system, Kontroll centers around the brooding, charismatic Bulcsú and is return to grace. Once a promising young professional above ground, Bulcsú now spends his days and nights wandering the tunnels as the reluctant leader of a ragtag group of ticket inspectors. Lower, even, then the traffic police, they dally forth daily to fight sad and hilarious uphill battles against hostile straphangers, abusive punks, pimps, pickpockets and drunken tarts. Other, more troubling antagonists include rival gangs of inspectors, and a malevolent hooded angel of darkness hom Bulcsú confronts in the film’s final showdown. A prize-winner at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, and screened at the Critics’ Week in Cannes, Kontroll is a poignant tale of one lost soul’s journey toward love and salvation.

Istvan Bibo: Fragments

Péter Forgacs, 2002; 69 min.
“To live democratically means to live without fear. Fear of those who speak another language. Fer of those who come from far away. Fear of those who think a bit diffeently.”—Istvan Bibo
One of the leading social and political philosophers of the 20th century, Istvan Bibo helpedprvide Jews with with false documents during the war and later went on to become one of the leaders of the ’56 Uprising, for which he was later imprisoned. Using home movies, found footage and period newsreels, and using Bibo’s own words as a counterpoint to them, Péter Forgacs here creates a fascinating portrait of Bibo, tracing his development out of the competing schools of social thought and his later transformation into a politician and eventually Minister in the Hungarian government.

That Day Was Ours

Zsolt Kezdi-Kovacs; 123 min.

Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács (When Joseph Returns) approaches the record of October 23, 1956—the day of the outbreak of the’56 Uprising—from a decidedly specific point-of-view: the experiences of the students at the Academy of Film and Theater. There were 130 enrolled in fall, 1956; about 30 of them decided to participate in Kézdi-Kovács’s film, including such luminaries as directors Karoly Makk and Peter Bacso and actor Mari Törocsik. Weaving together a series of interviews, That Day was Ours traces the evolution of events from various groups of students deciding that their Academy also had to be represented at the mounting protests (they were somewhat embarrassed that the technical schools were already there) to the famous march of many thousands to the statue of Hungarian patriot Sandor Petöffi, where the mounting passion of the speakers convinced many that something serious was indeed taking place. Several of the students recount going to the Parliament building to await a speech by Imre Nagy, who disappointed large segments of the crowd by addressing them as “Comrades;” others talk about the effort to take over the radio station, and the foreboding arrival of the first tanks, as well as the first deaths. With so much detail, and so any different experiences from which to draw, That Day was Ours makes the events of October 23 come alive in extraordinary and deeply moving way.