István Nemeskürty has played an important role in three major areas of Hungarian cinema: as studio head (until 1984); as film historian and author of Word and Image: History of the Hungarian Cinema (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1968; revised edition 1975); and, most recently, as head of the Hungarian Film Institute. Kinoeye here presents a previously unpublished interview by Graham Petrie, made in 1985. … Read more
Film Criticism
Interview with Ibolya Fekete
Chico (2001), Ibolya Fekete’s second feature film, premiered at last year’s Karlovy Vary film festival, causing heated reactions for its depiction of the recent history of central Europe and especially the war in Croatia. Fekete, however, came away with the Best Director prize and the prize of the Ecumenical jury, and this year the film snapped up the Grand Prix from … Read more
Analysis of The Turin Horse
“In Turin on 3rd January, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, the driver of a cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to … Read more
Analysis of Angi Vera
The difficulty of “living in truth” under an oppressive political regime, a consistent theme in the writings of Václav Havel, is a useful starting point for a consideration of two Hungarian films, Angi Vera (1978) and Colonel Redl (1984). Angi Vera is set in Stalinist Hungary and Colonel Redl in the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg Empire, but it does not require much of an imaginative stretch to see a parallel … Read more
About the Children of the Green Dragon
Máté, a lonely, divorced real estate agent is put in charge by his boss to sell a suburban storage building. The storage is rented by the Chinese, who keep their semi-legal goods here before selling them on the market. The stock comprising of several thousands of boxes is guarded by a Chinese man, Wu, who also lives in the storage. … Read more
Reviews of Hungarian films
Kinoblog is built on foundations laid by two earlier, somewhat over-specialised blogs – FilmJournal?s Closely Watched DVDs and an unpublished earlier effort from 2004 (also called Kinoblog), and I?ll be porting all the pieces I wrote for them over here in due course. The problem I had with them was that their focus (on Czech and Soviet cinema, respectively) was … Read more
Analysis of Milky Way
The article deals with Benedek Fliegauf?s Milky Way (Tejút, 2007), trying to establish the kinds of narrative structures and levels of this visual material, how far they determine its medial form, and what kinds of perceptive-receptive mechanisms its cinema and installation medial form offer, namely, how it can function as a movie and as an installation. While the article focuses … Read more
Comparative analysis of Hungarian and Romanian Cinema
Presupposing that historical and generational resemblances allow for a joint reading of their ?lms, postcommunist Hungarian and Romanian (also nicknamed ?New? and ?New Wave?) directors? ?lms are examined (Radu Muntean, Szabolcs Hajdu, Attila Gigor). The proposal of allegorical reading is made, with speci?c ?lmic locuses highlighted as creating cinematic allegories out of (graphic) isolation and intermedial mixes. … Read more
Analysis of three movies by Béla Tarr
The paper focuses on Satantango (Sátántangó, 1994), Werckmeister Harmonies (Werckmeister Harmóniák, 2000) and The Man From London (A londoni fér?, 2007), particularly on the manner in which the key notion at the core of Tarr?s universe ?nds a development within those ?lms: the relation between the narrative and its (?entropic,? so to speak) excess. Notably, the Point Of View proves … Read more
Analysis of the works by Hajnal Németh
Hajnal Németh is preoccupied with the visual, corporeal, and aural chasm opened up by the frequently invisible, dislocated or muted object proper of her works. Music, sounds, noises pour into the exhibition spaces constituting, as Don Ihde terms it, the shape-aspect of things and bodies; ?ashing images exhibit themselves on a stage-like construction as a dismembered narrative; movement caught in stagy frozenness … Read more
