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39th Hungarian Film Week – Budapest 2008
By Ron Holloway | August 20, 2008
Budapest celebrated far more than just the internationally popular 39th Hungarian Film Week (29 January to 5 February 2008), attended this year by circa 100 journalists and guests from around the globe, the majority of whom then leapfrogged from Budapest to Berlin to attend the Berlinale. Just a week before the opening of the Hungarian festival, on January 22, a year-long celebration was launched to commemorate the 550th anniversary of the coronation in 1458 of King Matthias Corvinus (1443-1490).
An enlightened monarch with a life-long fascination for the Italian Renaissance, Corvinus patronized Italian and European artists at his Budapest court and founded the Bibliotheca Corviniana, in the 15th century second only in size to the Vatican Library.
Added to this was an impressive exhibition on “Hungarian Cinema in the Past 100 Years” displayed over three floors in the Kogart Gallery. Enriched by photos, posters, documentation, and film excerpts, the exhibition highlights three remarkable phases of Hungarian film history: the silent period during the First World War, the early sound period with its comedy boxoffice hits, and the politically reflective period of the 1970s that has continued pretty much unbroken up to the present. When this stellar exhibition goes on tour, it’s the silent period that should interest cineastes the most, for during the First World War Hungary rivaled Denmark for fifth place among European film production centers in continental Europe. Sandor Korda (alias Alexander Korda) and Mihaly Kertesz (alias Michael Curtiz) made film history at studios in Budapest and Kolozsvar (the birthplace of King Matthias Corvinus, known today as Cluj-Napoca in Romania).
Another event at the Hungarian Film Week was an excursion to the newly opened Korda Studios on the outskirts of Budapest. Click on the Korda Studios website (www.kordafilmstudio.hu), and you will find news about the controversial 20% Hungarian film production rebate that has sparked some finger-pointing by a commission in Brussels for unfair competition to other production lands in the European Union. However, as Ferenc Grunwalsky, President of the Motion Picture Public Fund of Hungary (MMK), pointed out in a lengthy opening-night speech, the 20% rebate was part and parcel of the country’s new Film Law, which had been passed by the parliament before Hungary had joined the European Union.
Awarded the Golden Reel (another 2008 Hungarian Film Week innovation) by the International Jury and the Gene Moskowitz Critics Prize, Kornel Mundruczo’s Delta certified the director as a key creative name to watch in a national cinematography already packed with awarded auteur filmmakers (Bela Tarr, Gyorgy Palfi, Benedek Fliegauf, Nimrod Antal, Peter Forgacs). Reported to have been five years in the making, and reshot in great part due to the death of the lead actor (Lajos Bertok, to whom the film is dedicated) in the middle of shooting, Delta then went through plot changes to fit the personality of the new lead actor, musician Felix Lajko (he also composed the score for the film), to accommodate someone who had never stood before a camera before.
A film flooded with striking visual scenery – the setting is the Danube delta, a lush wildlife haven – rather than pegged to a dramatic narrative line, the imagery only serves to enforce metaphorically the timeless primeval tragic elements of a story apparently inspired by similar murderous revengeful elements found in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Euripides’ Electra. When a young man returns to the Danube delta after many years for the burial of his father, he finds his mother married to another man and meets his half-sister (Orsi Toth, the star of Mundruczo’s previous Joanna film-oratorio) for the first time. Retreating to an isolated hut in the delta, he is soon joined by his sister, whose decision leads to incest and spurs the scorn of the community. When the sister is raped by the stepfather (depicted in an emotionally rendering long shot), the tragedy then runs its course, supported by the natural beauty of a sunset and strains from Gounod’s St. Cecilia’s Mass.
Awarded the runnerup prize for Best Genre Film, Attila Gigor’s A nyomozo (The Investigator) also bagged five other citations: Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Zsolt Anger), Best Editor, Grand Prize of Youth Jury, and the TV2 Purse Prize ($150,000) for Best Commercial Film. A debut feature, The Investigator leans heavily on film noir esthetics to tell the story of a 37-year-old coroner, whose despairing love for his invalid mother (dying of spine cancer) leads him to a contract killing to obtain the money for a possible survival operation in Sweden. However, once the foul deed has been committed, the man discovers that the victim might be his own unknown brother, which then turns the killer into an investigator to find out just who the victim really was in the first place. As a riddle to be unlocked, there’s a certain fascination of sitting through nearly two hours of twists and turns.
Benedek Fliegauf’s Tejut (Milky Way), awarded the Special Jury Prize and a share of the prize for Best Cinematography (Gergely Poharnok), might have fared better with the International Jury had the film not already won a Golden Leopard at last year’s Locarno festival in the avant-garde “Filmmakers of Today” competition. Much more than just a series of minimalist vignettes – some absurd, others comic, all visually entertaining – Milky Way leans heavily on the score by Raptors’ Kollektiva to explore the mysteries behind the banality of everyday life as seen against some familiar and timeless landscapes. One humorous vignette comes across like an animated cartoon. When a stretch of rubber is stretched across a plane surface, it’s then blown up with air to resemble the entrance to a fairground funny house for passing pedestrians. When a child enters the picture, together with her granddad, we have a fairy-tale is anchored in the foibles of the human condition.
Two documentaries were standouts. Ferenc Moldovanyi’s Masik bolygo (Another Planet), awarded a prize for Best Creative Cinematography (Tibor Mathé), was seven years in planning and four years in making, due mostly to its expansive thematic content. Tagged by the director as docu-fiction, Another Planet chronicles the “hidden face of our planet” – namely, the plight of children in different corners of the world – Ecuador, Cambodia, Congo – whose lives are badly scarred by circumstances beyond their control. Relying largely on recorded testimony with children, then shooting their lives in closeup in streets and shacks, the director passionately explores and deplores the reality of child laborers, child prostitutes, and child soldiers in a manner that seeks to awaken the conscience of the viewer. And although he doesn’t offer any practical solutions, nor venture into the nebulous area of far-ranging forecasts, the questions he raises are valid all the same.
Zsuzsa Boszormenyi and Kai Salminen’s Hosszu utazas (Last Bus Stop), awarded Best Documentary, might easily be described as an absurd tragicomedy, save that everything that happens in this border village is factual and true. Although the population of Szelmenc is mostly Hungarian-speaking, half of the village lies in Slovakia, while the other half belongs to the Ukraine. How this anomaly originally came about (due apparently more to political expediency than anything else) doesn’t really matter. What counts is the desire of the population on both sides of the border to open a transit crossing in the middle of the village to allow villagers to visit their relatives. After months or political wrangling in the respective capitals of Bratislava and Kiev, the border crossing became a reality – and a nightmare. For visiting visas even for relatives are hard to come by, simply because Slovakia belongs to the European Union and the local mafia took over the taxi trade on the Ukrainian side. Indeed, as a microcosm of European Union detente, Last Bus Stop mirrors the reality of cracks and fissures in European Union policy.
Awards
Feature Films
Main Prize, Golden Reel
Delta, dir Kornel Mundruczo
Best Genre Film
A nyomozo (The Investigator), dir Attila Gigor
Special Jury Prize
Tejut (Milky Way), dir Benedek Fliegauf
Best Director
Elemer Ragalyi, Nincs kegyelem (Without Mercy)
Best Producer
Denes Szekeres, Tivoli Film, Nincs kegyelem (Without Mercy), dir Elemer Ragalyi, and A Nap utcai fiuk (The Sun Street Boys), dir Gyorgy Szomjas
Best Cinematography
Gergely Poharnok, Tejut (Milky Way), dir Benedek Fliegauf, and Fovenyora (Hour Glass), dir Szabolcs Tolnai
Best First Film, Simo Sandor Prize
Kalandorok (Adventurers), dir Bela Paczolay
Best Actor
Zsolt Anger, A nyomozo (The Investigator), dir Attila Gigor
Best Actress
Agi Gubik, Panik (Panic), dir Attila Till
Best Screenplay
Attila Gigor, A nyomozo (The Investigator), dir Attila Gigor
Best Editor, Golden Scissors Prize
Zoltan Kovacs, A nyomozo (The Investigator), dir Attila Gigor
Best Visual Design
Balázs Hujber, (Overnight), dir Ferenc Torok
Best Original Music
Felix Lajko, Delta, dir Kornel Mundruczo
Best Sound, Golden Microphone Prize
Tamas Beke, Delta, dir Kornel Mundruczo
Gene Moskowitz (International Critics) Prize
Delta, dir Kornel Mundruczo
People’s Choice (via Internet)
Panik (Panic), dir Attila Till
Documentary Films
Best Documentary
Hosszu utazas (Last Bus Stop), dir Zsuzsa Boszormenyi, Kai Salminen
Creative Documentary Prize
Von Höfler vagyok (I’m Von Höfler), dir Peter Forgacs
Best Director
Kristof Kovacs, Malaccal teljes (Full of Grease)
Best Cinematography (ex aequo
Zsolt Toth and Andras Salamon, A varos ritmusa (Rhythm of the City), dir Andras Salamon, and Sandor Mohi, Imadsag (The Prayer), dir Sandor Mohi
Best Creative Documentary Cinematography
Tibor Mathé, Masik bolygo (Another Planet), dir Ferenc Moldovanyi
Pal Schiffer Prize
Richard Schuster, Harom hianyzo oldai (Missing Pages), dir Richard Schuster
Equal Opportunities Prize
Marton Szirmai, A sullyedo falu (The Sinking Village), dir Marton Szirmai
Scientific Educational Documentary Films
Best Scientific Educational Documentary
Szelid Szalakon – A nemezelesrol (On Gentle Threads – About Felt-Making), dir Judit Pocs, István Rittgasser
Best Director (ex aequo)
Zsolt Marcell Tort, A vizjarta pusztak videken – A Koros-Maros Nemzeti Park (On The Land Of Watery Plains – The Koros-Maros National Park), and Zoltan Torok, Vidrasors (Otter Man)
Best Cinematography
Jozsef Rak, Zold muzsak csokja – Himbos (The Kiss of Green Muses – Hermaphrodite), dir Idilko Kormos∞
– Ron Holloway
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