In Hun­gary, people used to co-exist with wolves. But the envi­ron­men­tal and polit­i­cal atmos­phere drove them out of their ter­ri­to­ries for nearly 100 years. In the last decade, they have reap­peared. BÁRÁN KUTYA ÉS FARKAS shows Csaba and his five dogs as they care for the live­stock in the ter­ri­to­ries in the north­ern moun­tains that the wolves have reclaimed. 

Caused by a dimen­sion anom­aly, mil­lions of people have exchanged places with their alter egos from par­al­lel uni­vers­es. A few years after, the Anom­aly Foun­da­tion was found­ed to inte­grate new­com­ers into soci­ety. In their aware­ness rais­ing cam­paign movie four alter egos were inter­viewed to tell their sto­ries. They con­fess frankly what they have won and what they have lost after being trans­posed to this world. - An enthu­si­as­tic approach to create some­thing solely char­ac­ter-driven: an absur­dis­tic mock­u­men­tary short about our rela­tion to hidden desires and the spec­trum of self-accep­tance. 

Lev­ente Huszka holds an MFA in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture from Eötvös Loránd Uni­ver­si­ty, Budapest. Cur­rent­ly he works for Gen­er­al Elec­tric as an HR Spe­cial­ist facil­i­tat­ing Induc­tion train­ings, also trans­lat­ing offi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion and par­tak­ing in sim­pli­fi­ca­tion projects. He plays at Fórum Tár­su­lat’s Improv The­atre as an ama­teur actor, also work­ing on short film projects at Kultúr Krimó, includ­ing HALLOJARAT (inter­views with artists of the Hun­gar­i­an alter­na­tive music scene). 

DON’T COME HOME THIS YEAR is a short film about Roman­ian migrants return­ing home from Italy during the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and get­ting stuck at the Aus­tri­an-Hun­gar­i­an border. The film is mix­ture of provoca­tive video mate­r­i­al: The strand­ed send out videos about their sit­u­a­tion from their smart­phones to which migrants who remained in Italy and Roma­ni­ans at home react by send­ing back their opin­ion. The film unfolds a semi­otic dis­course within the stress field of the pan­dem­ic on migrant work­ers, patri­o­tism and virus trans­mis­sion. A fast and emo­tion­al reflec­tion on a real life frag­ment of the pan­dem­ic and on our use of social media.

Direc­tor, edit­ing: Stefan Voicu
Con­tact: Voicu_Stefan@phd.ceu.edu

in Pro­gramme with

DEUTSCHLAND IST EIN TRAMPOLIN

LOST BOY

There are sev­er­al com­pi­la­tions of the Lumiere broth­ers’ famous first films in film archives around the world. This ver­sion comes from the film archive of the Hun­gar­i­an Film Insti­tute and con­tains 13 shorts from the early French pro­grammes and 2 shorts taken in 1896 in Budapest for a set of screen­ings there.

BUFFALO ON THE ROOF is the name of a six-days fes­ti­val and camp of Jewish and non-Jewish folka­rtists in Buf­fa­lo-Gap in West Vir­ginia, USA. After its enor­mous suc­cess the year before 1993, it is orga­nized for the second time and doc­u­ment­ed in a film. The ‘Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Folk Arts Centre’, the famous Klezmer group ‘Brave Old World’ fea­ture amongs other groups from Roma­nia, Poland, Russia and the 1993’s spe­cial guest, the Ukrainia. Groups from var­i­ous other East and West Euro­pean nations are par­tic­i­pat­ing, too. BUFFALO ON THE ROOF, in its cel­e­bra­tion of the inter­re­la­tion­ship of the Jewish and non-Jewish tra­di­tions of East­ern Europe presents an extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­ni­ty for Jews and non-Jews to explore the riches of their own and each other’s cultures.

Imre lives close to his friend’s sister Eszti who also came from Makó. They meet in London before she and her hus­band travel to their daughter’s home in New York for Hanukah. There they visit other friends from Makó. In the Ortho­dox Jewish dis­trict of Brook­lyn they talk about their past. On the last day of the feast Eszti’s family comes togeth­er to light all the can­dles of the Menora: Hanukah in New York. This doc­u­men­tary is the fourth part of the serial.

Imre grew up in Makó and is a ‘local boy made good’, a poor immi­grant who came to Eng­land from Hun­gary (via Israel) with noth­ing and who is now a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man. In par­tic­u­lar, we join him on a quest to find his boy­hood friend, the elu­sive Josi Markovich who nor­mal­ly lives in New York, but is rumoured to be in Israel. On the way, we meet other Makó Jews and Imre final­ly finds him­self at a gath­er­ing of the Makó Jews, when they come togeth­er at the Makó Syn­a­gogue in B’ne Brak at the end of May to com­mem­o­rate the death of the last Makó Rabbi. This doc­u­men­tary is the third part of the serial.

News quick­ly spreads of the murder of a Romany family in a Hun­gar­i­an vil­lage. The per­pe­tra­tors have escaped and nobody claims to know who might have com­mit­ted the crime. For anoth­er Romany family living close by, the murder only serves to con­firm their latent, care­ful­ly repressed fears. Far away in Canada the head of the family decides that his wife, chil­dren and their grand­fa­ther must join him as soon as pos­si­ble. Living in fear of the racist terror that sur­rounds them and feel­ing aban­doned by the silent major­i­ty, the family tries to get through the day after the attack. By night­fall, when dark­ness descends on the vil­lage, the family pushes the beds closer togeth­er than usual. Yet their hope of escap­ing the mad­ness proves illu­so­ry. Based on an actual series of killings in Hun­gary that claimed the lives of eight people in less than a year, Bence Flie­gauf por­trays the pogrom-like atmos­phere which breeds such vio­lence. The camera stays hot on the heels of the pro­tag­o­nists, making the breath­less esca­la­tion of events phys­i­cal­ly palpable.