Judit Ember

Shot in 1972, this remarkable documentary was released ten years later and had its first Western film festival screenings last year. “Gyula Gazdag is an outstanding Hungarian talent who seems to specialize in getting into trouble. This film, which he made with Judit Ember, another alert and sensitive director, was banned for ten years. In it, a rural community is in financial trouble and an expert from Budapest is sent to advise and reorganize. He is successful but his manner angers the local committee. Despite their own management failure, they feel his arrogance should be the subject of a reprimand at least.Read More »

Synopsis
Judit Ember returns to follow the life of Nóra Szabó, the heroine of her documentary film 𝘛𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘰̈𝘳𝘵𝘦́𝘯𝘦𝘵 (“Instructive Story”, 1975). The troubled young woman who formerly attempted to commit suicide by jumping off a fourth floor is now an unmarried and pregnant mother with two children. Her own mother also brought up her children in similar circumstances, in a closed community without men. But Jenő, the unflaggingly energetic labourer and father of Nóra’s third, as yet unborn child, brings change into their lives.Read More »

After nine years of preparation and five and a half days of shooting, the film was immediately banned and apart from a few secret screenings, it spent several years in a box. Nevertheless, there are not many films that can be said to have changed history the way this one did. By allowing the people in the movie to talk, the director gave them a chance to start the rehabilitation of the tortured, humiliated village. The film’s cameraman and the lawyer who asked for a reopening of the case in 1988, ultimately succeeding in the villagers’’ acquittal, will also participate in the discussion.Read More »