The documentary was shot in the prison for juvenile delinquents in Hungary. It does not aim at judging whether the perpetrators were convicted rightly or not but, given the burden they carry, how they can reintegrate into society after they are released.
A family slowly disintegrates under various pressures in late 1970s communist Hungary.
In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all.
Using verite conventions, a young couple with a baby and a child are worn away by the monotony of their lives.
Ostensibly a non-narrative study of various aspects of a rural winter, this short film by one of modern Hungarian cinema’s greatest visual poets has all the spellbinding qualities of his better-known feature debut Sindbad (Szindbád, 1971), but here allied to a winning sense of humour that’s never quite allowed to detract from the haunting beauty of many of the images. The end of autumn is heralded by a few red leaves still clinging to a statue’s sculpted robes, while whip pans across the increasingly wintry landscape and close-ups of rippling water are given character by seemingly random freeze-frames and Zoltán Jeney’s electronic chirrups on the soundtrack. There are recurring shots of birds, migrating en masse, huddled by the icy water or lying individually dead, frozen stiff in the snow. So far Capriccio has been a reasonably generic mood piece, but then the snowmen arrive…
Three people live together without having anything to do with each other. The macho father used to have a shooting gallery which he had to sell. Yet secretly, he keeps on dreaming about it.
Lajos Mezei is a middle-aged, insignificant, average man. He works at the post office sorting letters with a machine. His life is but a series monotonous everyday events, but he has a passion that makes him different from his fellow humans. This passion replaces all human relationships and events in his life. He flees into a world of his own, hermetically sealed, which only he can understand and where he therefore feels safe. One day, however, his well-balanced life is turned upside down.
Huszárik's graduation film was another short entitled Groteszk (Grotesque) in 1963 about a strange train voyage of an artist carrying his own picture.
Eighteen years after the failure of the revolution and freedom fighting 1848-49, the politicians of Hungary preparing for a compromise with Austria try to make use of the symbol of the revolution, the figure of the poet Petőfi Sándor, to their own advantage. They visit all the memorial sites, find the witnesses and recall the famous events. Memories and political intentions conflict with each other, and the circumstances of the poet's death cannot be reconstructed entirely.
An agent, sent to solve the secret of the lives of those who have a daily routine, wishes to be a part of them. After revealing the secret - that the whole world is a projected image - he enters this dream-reality.
Documentary about the Italian men that visit Hungary to meet girls and the Hungarian women that fall in love with them.
A man, a woman, an afternoon, a city, and an unspoken, hopeful desire to find love by way of the personal ads. A milestone of Hungarian cinema, Elek uses documentary techniques in a fiction context to make the frailty of everyday life as palpable as possible.
A man becomes acquainted with the mystery of female hands during a trip.
A twenty-year-old young man believes that sport and philosophical books help him to be strong enough to meet life, but his determination and will give way to depressing memories.
A Hungarian Jew is forced to give a false testimony on his relatives in WW2 Hungary.
A grey-haired man walks through the fields. Fatigued, but with the same tenacity he roams the roads, the pathways, the tracks every day, medical bag in hand. Everyone awaits him: desperate or in hope, to the dying or to the woman in labour. He is the local GP. In fact, he is film director Imre Gyöngyössy’s father, the protagonist of one of his first short films. The personal narration based on the director’s poem is made complete by the pictures of Sándor Sára and István Gaál who were also active at Balázs Béla Studio at that time.
Often called a “film poem” or a “film symphonie” Huszárik’s masterpiece consists of montages of horses from the dawn of time to the modern times from cave paintings to horse races. (MUBI)
A playful portrait of a young woman who merrily roams the streets of Budapest. A New Wave love letter in motion.
