Mihály Víg
Presents moving images of society’s outsiders, the impoverished and oppressed, whose lives are contrasted with the opulent surroundings of contemporary Vienna.
The three stories within Genesis explore the notion of family: a woman in her late thirties rediscovers the faith she lost as a child; a mother goes to extreme lengths to ensure that her daughter is saved from the fate she was forced to endure; a Roma boy’s family are killed and the perfect world of his childhood is destroyed.
NOTFILM is a feature-length experimental essay on FILM -- its author Samuel Beckett, its star Buster Keaton, its production and its philosophical implications -- utilizing additional outtakes, never before heard audio recordings of the production meetings, and other rare archival elements.
A documentary about the making of The Turin Horse, the last film directed by Hungarian master Béla Tarr.
A monumental windstorm and an abused horse's refusal to work or eat signal the beginning of the end for a poor farmer and his daughter.
A switchman at a seaside railway witnesses a murder but does not report it after he finds a suitcase full of money at the scene of the crime.
This story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain. In a provincial town, which is surrounded with nothing else but frost. It is bitterly cold weather — without snow. Even in this bewildered cold hundreds of people are standing around the circus tent, which is put up in the main square, to see — as the outcome of their wait — the chief attraction, the stuffed carcass of a real whale. The people are coming from everywhere. From the neighboring settlings, even from quite far away parts of the country. They are following this clumsy monster as a dumb, faceless, rag-wearing crowd. This strange state of affairs — the appearance of the foreigners, the extreme frost — disturbs the order of the small town. Ambitious personages of the story feel they can take advantage of this situation. The tension growing to the unbearable is brought to explosion by the figure of the Prince, who is pretending facelessness. Even his mere appearance is enough to break loose destructive emotions...
Revisits of locations on the Great Hungarian Plain - the puszta - that were used in Tarr's Sátántangó and Werckmeister harmóniák. Recitations of short lyric poems by Hungary's national poet Sándor Petofi.
Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.
Karrer plods his way through life in quiet desperation. His environment is drab and rainy and muddy. Eaten up with solitude, his hopelessness would be incurable but for the existence of the Titanik Bar and its beautiful, haunting singer. But the lady is married and Karrer is determined to keep her husband away...
Director Janos Xantus was in the middle of making a video about Hungarian rock star Tamas Pajor when his subject suddenly became a convert to born-again Christianity. As a result, Xantus was able to record the startling transition. Pajor had been a hell-bent rocker, heavily into drugs, and known for a violent temper. We see him become a clean-living, clean-cut youth who sings about Jesus. Xantus had captured pre-conversion tape of Pajor trashing a hotel room and punching his hand through a plate glass window. In one of this film's most effective scenes, the new Pajor, hand heavily bandaged, quietly watches this footage. Rock Terito also has some dramatic recreations, but these add little to our understanding of Pajor. The transfer from video to film was generally effective, but some scenes are murkily lit. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
In this dense setting, the inhabitants of a large, claustrophobic apartment reveal their darkest secrets, fears, obsessions and hostilities.
Black and White Short. Featuring collage centered around a drive through the country.
