Honeymoons

Karesz has been raised in an institution, his mother has a new family, and her husband does not tolerate that she meets her first-born son. Karesz tramps, joining up with his casual pals he washes the windscreens of cars, sells newspapers; sometimes they steal, or break into houses if hired.

1979. Gábor H. works in a law enforcement institution. He robs a bank branch, gets into jail. 1989. Gábor H. and the similarly unemployed Sanyi want to get money by robbing.

In this mix of black comedy and harsh drama, a man and wife are divorced yet still have to share their living quarters even though the wife has remarried -- housing is seriously hard to find in Budapest. Csaba (Karoly Eperjes) has just come out of doing a stint in prison because he stabbed a man while drunk, and when he goes home he discovers that his wife (Mariann Erdos) is now living with someone else in their apartment. Csaba quickly divorces his wife but he still has to move in and share a kitchen and bathroom with her and her new mate, suffering because he still loves her. This untenable situation is complicated by visits from Csaba's mother, and by various women he starts seeing, as well as by a busy-body neighbor. The three main roles of Csaba, his wife, and her lover (Peter Andorai) are excellently interpreted in this satire on social morés and economic realities.

György Szomjas’s first feature—made after a decade of short documentaries—is a bold attempt at a goulash western, set on the puszta, or Great Hungarian Plain, in 1837. Mixing Miklós Jancsó imagery and a Sergio Leone narrative, this ballad-like saga opens with image of a lone horseman on the empty plain, riding past a rude gallows. The film concerns the vengeful return of a legendary betyár (outlaw), briefly a hero to the local herdsmen who oppose the state building a canal across their grazing land. Although Szomjas works from ethnographic records and archival material, it is hardly surprising that this violent, primitivist film would be more popular with Hungarian audiences than critics. Replete with young guns, crooked sheriffs, tavern brawlers and hardbitten plug-uglies, this widescreen film is strikingly shot by Elémer Ragályi (cinematographer for most of Gyula Gazdag’s films)—a feast of loamy, autumnal colors.

A Hungarian drama.

A Hungarian band plays American rock & roll and blues hits with great enthusiasm and passion, but success seems to avoid them. TV and radio don't play their songs, sometimes even their crowd just sits and sips beer. Something must be done, and the band's leader (Lóránt Schuszter) comes up with the big idea: write and play songs for the people about themselves and not about some exotic, but too distant people's life. "We move from Tobacco Road to Retek street" With the remains of the band and a second singer (Gyula Deák "Bill") they find what they failed to show people before. The rich new sound can finally translate the spirit of blues and rock much more than words from any dictionaries could, this is the Köbánya-blues.

It is 1989, the year of the demise of socialism in eastern Europe. Nevertheless, the one theme of Junk Movie does not refer to this historical moment of high ideals, quite the contrary, the wild, burlesque of a motif-mozaic seems merely to stick it’s tongue out at the arrogant players of politics who have their heads stuck in the clouds. The film rudely points out the mystery and unapproachability surrounding the every-day existence of politics. The scene is a greasy, falling-down block of a pub called the Gólya and its immediate surroundings.