Hungary

  • Pál Erdöss – Adj király katonát AKA The Princess (1982)

    1981-1990DramaHungaryPál Erdöss
    Adj király katonát (1982)
    Adj király katonát (1982)

    Pal Erdoss’s ”Princess” is an ironically titled film if ever there was one; its heroine is addressed as ”princess” only once during the course of the story, and then by a weak-kneed, apologetic boyfriend who has failed to protect her from rape. Jutka (Erika Ozsda) is anything but the privileged creature of the title. A tough, lonely teen-age girl who has come to Budapest to work in a textile mill, Jutka becomes the focus of Mr. Erdoss’s examination of courtship rituals, teen-age mores and motherhood.Read More »

  • Zoltán Fábri – Dúvad AKA The Brute (1961)

    Zoltán Fábri1961-1970DramaHungary
    Dúvad (1961)
    Dúvad (1961)

    A landowning farmer busies himself in his free time by bedding down the women on his farm and then tossing them aside. The farmer does not reform his ways and is soon chasing after the young manager’s wife, the woman he dropped not that long ago. The results are disastrous.Read More »

  • Péter Forgács – The Danube Exodus (1998)

    1991-2000DocumentaryExperimentalHolocaust HistoryHungaryPéter Forgács
    The Danube Exodus (1998)
    The Danube Exodus (1998)

    Quote:
    He is primarily interested in the way in which these films seem to depict only happy moments, but on closer consideration they also appear to tell a hidden history, which can be brought back to the surface by the recycling filmmaker.

    In the travelogue The Danube Exodus, he documents the Jewish exodus from Slovakia just before the beginning of World War II. In two boats, a group of nine hundred Slovak, Austrian Jews tried to reach the Black Sea via the river Danube, in order to get to Palestine from there. Forgács based his film on the amateur films of Captain Nándor Andrásovits, the captain of one of the boats.
    Read More »

  • Ildikó Enyedi – Büvös vadász aka The Magic Hunter (1994)

    Ildikó Enyedi1991-2000ArthouseDramaHungary
    Büvös vadász (1994)
    Büvös vadász (1994)

    From Amazon:
    Magic Hunter begins as a fairy tale told by a mother to her frightened daughter during a World War II air raid and then shifts into the contemporary story of Max, a police marksman (British actor Gary Kemp, dubbed in Hungarian) who loses his nerve when he wounds an innocent hostage. He manages to pass his annual shooting test only when a sinister colleague lends him three magic bullets that won’t fail to miss their target; to get a new supply, Max will have to strike a deal with the devil.Read More »

  • Miklós Jancsó – Nekem lámpást adott kezembe az Úr Pesten AKA Lord’s Lantern in Budapest (1999)

    1991-2000ArthouseComedyHungaryMiklós Jancsó
    Nekem lámpást adott kezembe az Úr Pesten (1999)
    Nekem lámpást adott kezembe az Úr Pesten (1999)

    Five different stories are connected by two recurring characters: gravediggers Kapa and Pepe. In one story, the director and screenwriter are characters. Killed by assassins, their ashes are then mixed up by the antic gravediggers. In another, a rich man persuades a poor one not to kill himself, and ends up committing suicide himself, while in a third, characters in a country mansion meditate on Hungarian history, revolution and violence.Read More »

  • Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hranitzky – Werckmeister harmóniák AKA Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) (HD)

    1991-2000Ágnes HranitzkyArthouseBéla TarrHungary
    Werckmeister harmóniák (2000) (HD)
    Werckmeister harmóniák (2000) (HD)

    Quote:
    An innocent young man witnesses violence breaks out after an isolated village is inflamed by the arrival of a circus and its peculiar attractions, a giant whale and a mysterious man named “The Prince”.Read More »

  • Béla Tarr – Diplomafilm (1981)

    1981-1990Béla TarrDramaHungaryShort Film
    Diplomafilm (1981)
    Diplomafilm (1981)

    Diplomafilm is a short film that Béla Tarr made to graduate from Art School, in 1981. It is the predecessor of The Prefab People, with the same plot and the same actors, but with some changes in the plot.Read More »

  • Béla Tarr – Panelkapcsolat AKA The Prefab People (1982)

    1981-1990ArthouseBéla TarrDramaHungary
    Panelkapcsolat (1982)
    Panelkapcsolat (1982)

    A husband and wife, drifting apart, reflect on the events leading up to the worst argument of their marriage.

    Quote:
    “It’s the rawness of the film that makes us believe we are unquestionably seeing the truth.”
    Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

    A heavy going realistic slice of life domestic drama that is filmed in black and white. It’s a followup to Béla Tarr’s other domestic strife tales Family Nest and The Outsider. This one keys in on marital strife. It’s about a struggling young couple’s confrontations and their own inability to freely communicate with each other. Tarr was evidently influenced by the works of Ranier Werner Fassbinder and John Cassavettes.Read More »

  • Miklós Jancsó & István Márton – Kelj fel, komám, ne aludjál AKA Wake Up, Mate, Don’t You Sleep (2002)

    Miklós Jancsó2001-2010ArthouseComedyHungaryIstván Márton
    Kelj fel, komám, ne aludjál (2002)
    Kelj fel, komám, ne aludjál (2002)

    We are in standing in the ‘Puszta’, our pants are flapping, … Kapa and Pepe… Pepe, would you have guessed that you will be a prisoner-of-war in your own country? … There are some, who dig the soul out of its body. But who is to find there? A National German SS, a Hungarian foot-soldier, a Jew with a yellow star, a gymnastorkha Russian and a NATO soldier ride a bicycle on the Chain-Bridge.

    Wake Up, Mate, Don’t You Sleep! We lost the sheep with the bell. Jancsó in army uniform, Hernádi in a hat in front of the judges and then on a hospital bed, the T-34 Russian tank brings us Russian oranges and the feeding of fallen angels is strictly forbidden!Read More »

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