Casts & Crew
Also Directed by Gyula Gazdag
Filmmaker Gyula Gazdag's fascinating documentary follows Hungarian poet, playwright and activist István Eörsi on a trip to the streets of New York to visit his friend and contemporary, the iconic beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Shot just two years before Ginsberg's death, the film follows the two friends as they share poetry and laughs, wandering the streets of the Lower East Manhattan, musing about the past and contemplating the future.
Via the New York Times: "The Hungarian director Gyula Gazdag has transposed the middle section of Balzac's "Lost Illusions" from Paris in the mid-19th century to the Budapest of 1968... it tells of Laszlo Sardi - Balzac's Lucien Chardon - and his efforts to launch his literary career amid the snobbery and sophistication of a big city."
SELECTION documents a KISZ (Hungarian Young Communist League) chapter at an oil refinery that is interested in hiring a musical act as entertainment for young workers. The documentary shows the group discussing their criteria for the band, as well as their interviews with the individual bands. It is quickly apparent that the group isn’t interested in any sort of musical talent or the potential audiences’ interest. Rather, they are focused on ideological or moral issues that may be perceived as negative, such as groupies or outfits that are seen as too trendy. They settle on the musical group that is potentially the easiest to control, the youngest band. SELECTION works as a larger metaphor for what censorship was like in Socialist Hungary and was banned from being publicly screened until 1982.
Shot in B&W, Gyula Gazdag's film follows the surreal and often comic quests of young Andris, an orphan searching for a father who doesn't exist, and Orban, a government clerk who's had enough of oppressive bureaucracy.
This grotesque, micro-realistic film is set in a small village at the end of the seventies. A TV-staff comes to the Petőfi Memorial House. They want to record the comic opera, The Postman of Longjumeau, by Charles Adam, a 19th century French composer.
Mr. Dezső and Rezső are selecting the heroes for their new operetta. They represent different tastes and styles, and keep arguing about the casting of the four boys and four girls.
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. The story is more than just true: so sure was the community of its cause that Gazdag and Ember were invited to film the actual debate, and the reality makes us protagonists in the case. It is a situation that could happen anywhere but seldom has such a subject been treated in so absorbing and striking a way.
In the border town two sons of the local commander using stolen arms take hostages of eighteen girls in a dormitory, because they want to go West by aeroplane.
The week-days of a youth-camp, playing democracy, are depicted in this documentarist satire. Due to faulty organisation, the Budapest high-school students get only working tools, but no work to do. The camp leadership tries to cover up facts and urges them to be initiated into "community life".
