Hungarian Film – Karlovy Vary 2015

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Hungarian Film Magazine K A R L O V Y VA R Y 2 0 1 5 S U P P L E M E N T

The Wednesday Child Following short films showcasing strong directorial concepts and memorable performances by professional and amateur actors, Lili Horvåth’s debut feature has been widely anticipated both in her native Hungary and abroad. Her new film The Wednesday Child (Szerdai gyerek) premieres in the East of the West section of the Karlovy Vary film festival.

Photo by Bea Kallos/MTI

Working Against Predictability Your short films have been on the spectrum of film professionals from the beginning. How long was the road from short to first feature?

Considering the number of years it took, it wasn’t a short period: my graduation fi lm Sunstroke (Napszúrás) was finished in 2009. However, there has been much to do in the past 6 years. Writing The Wednesday Child’s script took time – it didn’t just materialize overnight, ready for filming. The first draft was completed in 2010 and the final version in 2013.

It is also my most extensive work as an author so far. It was a formative experience writing a featurelength fi lm after my shorts however long they were for the format and stretched its boundaries: initially,

I thought I would be naturally comfortable in the fulllength form but when I actually started working on The Wednesday Child, I realised I still had to learn how to construct (and at times deconstruct) a building of considerable scale.

At the time when the story was conceived, the fi lm funding system in Hungary was in a transitional phase: it was quite impossible to try applying for a grant in Hungary. Nevertheless, we were lucky: the project was selected for Cinelink in Sarajevo and later I also received the Nipkow Programme fellowship, which enabled me to work on the script in depth.

I felt that our fi lm was alive. After the creation of the H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

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of discovery: to find an unexpected role for one of the most prolific Hungarian film actors, Szabolcs Thuróczy – or to find an amateur or a wonderful stage actor whom you’ve never seen on the screen before. The consideration of the interactions between personalities to faithfully represent family relations, couple dynamics or antagonism always fascinates me.

Over your short film years, a group gathered around you. The people in this group have become your regular collaborators: first of all, cinematographer Róbert Maly and producer Károly Fehér.

This creative community – including editor Dániel Szabó, costume designer Szandra Sztevanovity and sound designer Rudolf Várhegyi – provides me with a very stable ground. I was lucky to have so many friends in the crew. This is especially reassuring when it comes to a first feature: it meant a lot to me that I didn’t have to prove to strangers that I am the director and that I can do this job. That would have been a great waste of energy.

Hungarian National Film Fund, we received script development support – it was becoming more and more certain that the fi lm was going to be made.

As you can see, the preparations for the film never really halted. Besides I had other jobs too. Just before the shooting of our film, I had the chance to be part of the crew of Kornél Mundruczó’s White God as casting director. This was an enlightening experience: I was able to observe the way the director and his staff put together a feature fi lm, from the first staff meeting to the last shooting day. This is something one cannot learn at fi lm school.

You mention casting and, judging by your previous films, you do seem like a very actorcentric director.

I am definitely very interested in this aspect. Every casting process is stimulating intellectually: at first you only see the list of characters as a blank page which you have to fi ll with content which is living and true. I strive for solutions which don’t seem trivial – this doesn’t mean that I want a dissonant cast or neglect well-known actors, but I try to keep my eyes open. I don’t want to choose someone just because I have seen him or her in a similar role. I like the thrill 4

H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

Describe your collaboration with Róbert.

We’ve been working together for a long time during which we changed a lot and so did our friendship.

I consider our collaboration on this feature particularly successful. Róbert read every single version of the script, well before creating the shotlist. On the one hand, he always told me his opinion, which led to further discussions lasting for years with long pauses, while on the other hand, we started sharing photos, pictures, fi lms to inspire each other and to find points of reference. As we approached fi lming, we created a shotlist of every single scene – we wouldn’t have dared start shooting otherwise, since this was the first feature length film for both of us.

How did you create the style of the film?

In the case of The Wednesday Child, we clarified the basic rules right at the beginning: for example, how the close-ups should always have special significance or that the aesthetics cannot overrule the story.

Also, that this theme of “being on the road” has to be represented in a visual way. We formed our own fi lming method, which meant that we started shooting and then watched the material at the end of the second week and modified things then. We started taking the camera off the track and moving more freely, shooting more incidental footage with different camera equipment. Rigid planning simply didn’t suit our material. Although the story is strictly fictitious, the presence of the amateur actors makes it in a way documentary-like. A carefully composed tracking shot didn’t feel appropriate.

As a filmmaker, you seem deeply devoted to the most oppressed layers of society, but you don’t live your own life in that milieu. Why are these people so important to you?

It would be difficult to answer this, because each of these stories I’ve chosen to tell for different reasons.

In The Swimming Pool Thief (Uszodai tolvaj), I was inspired by a character as well as a space encircled by eight buildings. In Sunstroke, I had my own premise: the meeting of two women and a gesture where one of them gives her child to the other. I wanted a confined space for the scene of this fateful meeting – I chose an orphanage. In The Wednesday Child, my main focus was to carry on with the main character of Sunstroke.

Is it more difficult to become successful as a female director?

So far I haven’t really experienced any discrimination.

This might be due to the fact that being a woman isn’t an issue for me: I’m very grateful to my parents for teaching me as a child that girls are equal to boys.

They never expected more from my brother than from me. I think this is why I find it absurd when someone’s professional competence is judged based on their gender.

At the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest, there were more girls than boys in my class, so as a fi lmmaker I got used it, to see girls who want

to make fi lms. I think there are many problems with the fi lm industry in general, but you have to admit that they’re a very accepting group. When they can see that you work hard, the teasing-and-testing stops. Making fi lms is very expensive and thus the responsibility is great: if one is not capable of standing up to the task, the industry will reject them.

But when one is, they will be accepted – regardless of their sex.

How are you feeling now, before the Karlovy Vary festival?

I’m nervous! I have a lot to do because, thank God, there’s a kind of buzz around the fi lm right now. We wrapped audio post-production a few days ago, the screening copy will be completed soon… Soon I’ll have to finally believe that The Wednesday Child will really be in front of the audience, and at a very prestigious festival.

Are you concerned about the reception of the film? Are you picky when it comes to festivals?

Which director would not feel concerned? In the world of film festivals I’m a newcomer. I have no idea what is coming after Karlovy Vary for me. But what I concentrate on is that the fi lm is finally out of the box. We, the creators of the fi lm and the Hungarian National Film Fund, were hoping for an A-list premiere, so we’re very happy now.

by Dániel Deák H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

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Zero

Gyula Nemes is arguably one of the most unique Hungarian directors. As his shorts, experimental docs and first feature show filmmaking is a limitless playground for him, where he can invite us into his special universe. His new film Zero is in the East of the West section of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Photo by Bea Kallos/MTI

Freedom, Poetry and Playing “Freedom!”, yells Gyula Nemes and he jumps from the top of an old houseboat into the Danube in his short fi lm Parrot (Papagáj, 2000). He yells and then takes a good sip from a bottle containing the liquor favoured by the homeless. He proceeds to attack television sets with a huge axe. He also films a shot of burning paper floating down the river, or creates a dream-like sequence starring a dirty riverside.

Filming is playtime – he gathers passers-by spotted around the fi lming location.

Freedom, poetry and playing – Gyula Nemes is obviously obsessed by these three elements of life, which we can discover in all of his earlier works too.

Just see his The Parrot, a short fi lm based on the short stories by Bohumil Hrabal. Czech culture has always been central in Nemes’s work, having attended the internationally renowned fi lm school FAMU, in a class led by Věra Chytilová and Karel Vachek.

Uncle and Nephew live their nonconformist life on a Danube peninsula in the middle of Budapest called Kopaszi-gát – a place Nemes has always been strangely drawn to. A place where one can be in the center of the city and on the periphery at the same time. Where you can eat what you fish from the river. A peninsula of freedom in life and in art, where storytelling is simply secondary – only unlimited creativity matters. The beauty of nature is mixed with the beauty of intellectual H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

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freedom. If you pay close attention, you’ll notice all the great revolutionary ideas swarming in the background...

However, like all islands of freedom, Kopaszi-gát gets spotted and desired by the hungry capital too… Nemes already visited this theme in the poetic documentary, Lost World (Letűnt világ), which won the Karlovy Vary Crystal Globe for Best Short Documentary in 2008.

The good ol’ days of the Kopaszi area were filmed on expired material, with a soundtrack consisting of a rehearsal by an old brass band trying to play Beethoven’s Egmont Overture – visuals and acoustics forming a perfect harmony. And harmony has never been more ironic. Nemes’s is a soft, absurd mockery aimed at the vulnerability of freedom, the aggressive capitalism of property development and the idea of seeing an EU flag as it waves over the brand new buildings after the demolition of an old world.

You can then listen to a perfect Egmont Overture, played by professionals, while a sequence of construction develops in perfect colours – a harmony so perfect, it is becoming sterile...

Passing might be the fourth key word of Nemes’s art.

The passing of ancient worlds and the loss of youth.

His first feature-length film, My One and Onlies (Egyetleneim, 2005), was at first sight a coming-of-age story too – premiered at Venice Critics’ Week in 2006.

But if you looked closer, it was in fact a farewell to youth, to the age of thrill and romanticism.

This hormone-fuelled first feature guided us through the seminal party scenes of early 2000s Budapest, all the intricacies of dating before the Internet Age, all the local faces of the small, cosy, familiar village of Budapest indie night-life. Nemes chose a deeply poetic, hypersensitive central character and followed him

with a zealous camera which keeps jumping around him, even bungee jumping (a scene created by Balázs Dobóczi, Nemes’s regular DOP). But, just as the world of youth, this story has to fall apart too, as uncontrollable movements, colours, beats, moods, and emotions take over. By the time we reach the film’s finale, Nemes has pumped the volume even higher, creating a downright editing orgy, reaching for the peek. But the atmosphere of loss cannot be subdued by volume.

What can be stronger than death? That which hasn’t even been born yet. Nemes’s last project before Zero was Negative History of Hungarian Films (2010), a perceptive response to the great paradox. Whatever could be more painful and jaded for a director than having to tell the story of his unmade films? The most notable of Hungarian directors – Miklós Jancsó, Károly Makk, András Kovács etc. – come together to share memories and emotions on the very locations of fi lms never realized, never completed. Retelling the stories of fi lms never made is an idea at the same time playful, ironic and melancholic – a perfect fit for the artistic universe of Gyula Nemes.

With Zero he takes the next step. Having its premiere at Karlovy Vary means an important homecoming for Nemes, a closing of a circle which began at the FAMU. And it is also a huge leap forward: no more Kopaszigát, no more familiar Budapest coziness: his eyes are on Africa and the exotic. Yet this story of a honeymaker and the extinction of bees is still an intimate part of the Nemes universe: exploring the question of freedom, nature, revolution and their antagonists, that is consumption and human greed. Seriously playful and confinedly free – how else to describe a fi lm where Udo Kier plays The Lord of the World?

by Dávid Dercsényi

SZFE and the ‘6x6’ Structure In 2015, the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest (SZFE) celebrates its 150th school year, but the academy has more than one reasons to be jubilant: former student Lili Horváth’s debut feature The Wednesday Child will premiere at the ‘East of the West’ competition at the Karlovy Vary fi lm festival, while graduating BA student Mátyás Szabó’s The Border will be participating in the ‘Future Frames’ programme.

Gábor Balázs, Head of Film and Media Institute at SZFE, tells us how the latter piece is one of the first fruits of a reform inside the school. ‘Five years ago we decided to take further advantage of the opportunities provided by our diversity of departments. Th is became what we unofficially call 6x6: the Directing, Cinematography, Screenwriting, Editing, Sound and Production classes all start in the same year, so the students can work simultaneously in small crews, thus simulating a more realistic fi lmmaking environment.’

The new structure has proven successful, and now the third cycle of students will start their 6x6studies, from September 2015. This year over a thousand applicants tried their luck to become SZFE students, but only an average of six people will be invited to join each of the six classes, due to the personalized nature of the training. Just like he was for the recently graduated BA class, acclaimed Hungarian director János Szász will be the head teacher once again, with other established fi lm professionals leading the other departments.

“Later we hope to widen the ‘6x6’ programme by introducing our other departments – Production Design, Music Composing – to it”, says Gábor Balázs about their future plans. In the meantime, keep your eyes open for great shorts from SZFE, because – along with The Border – these first graduation movies, supported by the Hungarian National Film Fund, are just starting their run on the festival circuit.

Deliver Us (Mindig csak), directed by Attila Hartung

Boglárka (Boglárka), directed by Ákos Badits

Concrete Noise (Betonzaj), directed by István Kovács

The Border (Határ), directed by Mátyás Szabó

To read about one of the first graduation films coming out of the 6x6 programme, turn the page for our interview with Mátyás Szabó, director of The Border.

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The Border

Mรกtyรกs Szabรณ, a recent graduate of the University of Theatre and Film Arts of Budapest (SZFE) is one of the ten young directors participating in Future Frames programme at the Karlovy Vary film festival. We asked this talented young filmmaker about the conception and making of The Border (Hatรกr).

Photo by Máté Bach

Restless Answers to Big Questions You have just finished your BA at SZFE. What was this experience like for you?

It was just like that of acting students: their first year performance is always the most honest, then they fall apart a bit during their second year, but are able to build themselves back up again for the third year, based on the knowledge they gained passing through this arc. My arc was just about the same.

Luckily, I was able to define my directorial approach early in my last year: the qualities I have, and how to bring them to the surface. But of course, fi lmmaking is not a one-man show, and the school’s greatest gift was definitely the fact that we directors could start our studies parallel with classes from five other

departments, so we were able to think as a crew from day one.

The Border is your graduation movie. What drew you to this subject?

My script editor classmate Barnabás Szöllősi came to me with this weird idea which caught my attention, but at first I couldn’t get a hold of it. It was about a restless guy who moves ahead throughout the story uncompromisingly, looking for answers to big, heavy questions. I loved the character, but it was all too theoretical. That’s when the idea of the hand car came up as a simple plot device. A man moving on a line.

I saw it in my head and I just loved it. Later the hand H U N G A R I A N F I L M M AG A Z I N E

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car became sort of a character itself, and rewrote the whole story.

What proved to be the biggest challenge during filming?

While in pre-production, along with DOP Kristóf Deák and production manager István Szabó, we became railway experts. We scouted all the narrowgauge rails, got in touch with everyone who ever saw a hand car – yet we ended up having to import a hand car from Slovakia. But an even bigger challenge was to find all these locations around the rails. We often needed to cheat a bit as our two main locations had two different rail widths, but I think only the biggest railway fans will notice this in the fi lm.

The film debuted at the film school a few months ago. What were the reactions like?

It’s a tradition for us to show our films to the head teachers during the editing process, and they indeed

gave me some very useful feedback. The second round was watching the movie with all of our classmates.

They were pretty positive about it afterwards, but with editor Eszter Bodoky we had already examined their attention pattern and shifts during the screening.

We changed the length a bit after that.

What are you currently working on?

I’m shooting another short fi lm over the summer, a lean and precise, yet absurd story. I’m intrigued by experimenting with limiting my possibilities to a minimal core (just like The Border had the rail), and seeing how far can I go in it. It will defi nitely be an experiment, but the story itself is quite entertaining. In the meantime, I’m preparing for a more serious short fi lm as well, and I also have a feature project with its groundwork already laid. Soon I will be starting work on it with a scriptwriter.

by Gábor Osváth

Meet HNFF in Karlovy Vary!

Katalin Vajda (Festival manager) kati.vajda@filmunio.hu +36-30-441-44-65 Csaba Papp (Public relations) csaba.papp@filmunio.hu +36-30-936-31-49

Hungarian Film Magazine Editors-in-Chief Dániel Deák, Gábor Osváth Editor Zsuzsanna Deák Art Director Tünde Kálmán Vera Rochlitz Photographers Máté Bach, Bea Kallos (MTI) Proofreader Anna Gát Hungarian Film Magazine is published by the Hungarian National Film Fund. Published in Hungary July 2015. All rights reserved.

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