The Prefab People

The Prefab People 1982

6.40

Using verite conventions, a young couple with a baby and a child are worn away by the monotony of their lives.

1982

Grotesque

Grotesque 1963

7.20

Huszárik's graduation film was another short entitled Groteszk (Grotesque) in 1963 about a strange train voyage of an artist carrying his own picture.

1963

Family Nest

Family Nest 1979

6.80

A family slowly disintegrates under various pressures in late 1970s communist Hungary.

1979

American Torso

American Torso 1975

6.60

The film depicts the lives of veterans of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution in the American Civil War, based in part on an Ambrose Bierce story. The whole film was re-edited using his own method called "light editing" in order to make it resemble a damaged silent film from the late 1800s.

1975

Sorted Letters

Sorted Letters 2000

1

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.

2000

You

You 1963

6.30

A playful portrait of a young woman who merrily roams the streets of Budapest. A New Wave love letter in motion.

1963

Elegy

Elegy 1966

6.80

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)

1966

Instructive Story

Instructive Story 1975

1

The protagonist of the film is Nóra, a teenager blessed with remarkable intellect, but unable to utilise her talents due to conflicts at school and with her family, with a tendency to harm even herself. The film looks back on the past life of Nóra and her circle of friends seven years back, investigating what brought them together then torn them apart as they have to face their old selves, lives and fates.

1975

Shooting Gallery

Shooting Gallery 1990

1.00

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.

1990

Honeymoons

Honeymoons 1970

6.00

Documentary about the Italian men that visit Hungary to meet girls and the Hungarian women that fall in love with them.

1970

Women's Hands

Women's Hands 1981

1

A man becomes acquainted with the mystery of female hands during a trip.

1981

A Theme with Variations

A Theme with Variations 1964

5.00

This film of three parts recalls memories from World War II. The titles of the parts are: Impartially, Terrified and Like a scream.

1964

Capriccio

Capriccio 1970

6.80

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…

1970

Version

Version 1979

8.00

A Hungarian jew is forced to give a false testimony on his relatives in WW2 Hungary.

1979

Gyuri

Gyuri 1978

6.00

The documentary-feature film taking place in the seventies is the "development novel" of CséplΕ‘ György, the intelligent and ambitious Gypsy boy. Having finished only two terms at school, the eighteen-year-old boy leaves Németfalu with two of his companions to find employment in Budapest and to break out of his miserable existence in the village cottage with the help of his small savings.

1978

The Myth-Makers

The Myth-Makers 1974

1

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 PetΕ‘fi 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.

1974

Vannak változások

Vannak változások 1977

1

Following Antal Végh's sociography the members of amateur film studio Cinema 64 recorded a 90 min 8mm film in the village of Penészlek in 1968. During a return to the village eight years later they have the chance to compare the changes from past to present in the lives of the local residents.

1977

Mistletoes

Mistletoes 1977

1

Judit Ember returns to follow the life of Nóra Szabó, the heroine of her documentary film π˜›π˜’π˜―π˜΅π˜°Μˆπ˜³π˜΅π˜¦Μπ˜―π˜¦π˜΅ ("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 JenΕ‘, the unflaggingly energetic labourer and father of Nóra’s third, as yet unborn child, brings change into their lives.

1977