Made in Hungary - Hungarian Film Festival in Los Angeles

Posted by Robin Menken

Celebrate the launch of Made in Hungary - Hungarian Film Festival in Los Angeles

October 25 - October 27 (Lumiere Cinema

9036 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211)

The film festival's mission is to showcase the diversity and richness of contemporary Hungarian cinema to American audiences, offering a selection of acclaimed Hungarian full-length feature films across various genres. Additionally, the festival promotes Hungary as a prime destination for international film productions, highlighting its versatile locations, skilled professionals, and favorable conditions for filmmaking. The three-day festival is organized by the Liszt Institute New York in collaboration with the Hungarian National Film Institute.

Made in Hungary screenings will take place between 25-27 October at the Lumiere Music Hall in Beverly Hills. They will show 8 movies: 7 current Hungarian full-length feature films and Oscar and Bafta winning “Poor Things” filmed in Hungary with talented local film professionals, among them Best Production Design Oscar winning Zsuzsa Mihalek set decorator.

“Made in Hungary is not just about films; it's about building bridges between cultures, sharing stories that touch our hearts, and experiencing the unique perspectives that Hungarian cinema and film industry have to offer.

We are honoured to have such a vibrant community of artists and film lovers with us, and we hope you find inspiration, joy, and connection in every screening. Let’s enjoy the magic of Hungarian cinema together!"

Csaba KÁEL-Hungary’s Government Commissioner for the Development of the Hungarian Film Industry, Chairman of the National Film Institute Hungary

Ádám Breier’s first feature “All About The Levkoviches” is a tender family dramedy set in the Jewish Quarter in Budapest, surrounded by its Communist past. After losing his beloved wife Zsuzsa (Máhr Ági), pugnacious boxer and ex- champion Tamás Levkovich (Bezerédi Zoltán) reunites with his son Ivan (Szabó Kimmel Tamás), an orthodox Jew. Ivan flies in from Israel to sit Shiva, bringing his young son Ariel. The generations face a rocky road to reconciliation.  Secular, atheist Tamás is visibly uncomfortable with his emotions. Roma fighter, Tamás’s student Feri (Váradi Roland) helps melt Tamás.

An antic score by Albert Márkos uses polka music to raise spirits. Breier’s film was a hit at this years Palm Springs Film Festival.

Rozália Szeleczki's "Cat Call" ("Cicaverzum") was part of the Hungarian Incubator programme. 

Fáni (Franciska Töröcsik is a 30-year-old architect and still single.  Traumatized by her father's early death, she cannot help foreseeing each suitor's death. The only woman architect at her office, she is patronized by her all male staff. Her progressive ideas for repurposing structures fall on deaf ears.

Except for the new man, star planner Mihaly(Csaba Polgá) who seems interested in her and her ideas. Mihaly moves in next door. He's interested in her but Fáni bunds with Smoothie, his Tom Cat. Why not, she can hear him speak! Jealous Smoothie warns her that her suitor Mihaly in already married ,and begins courting her instead.

The whimsical Tom-Rom-Com is blessed with witty production design by Pater Sparrow and art direction by Adrienn Galamb .

Barnabás Tóth's beautifully mounted Mastergame (Mesterjátszma) is loosely based on Stefan Zweig’s novella The Royal Game. It flirts with genres, beginning as a sort of psychodrama it turns increasingly romantic in the last act.  It takes its cues from the engaging genre of thrillers (both dramatic and camp) set on trains. In an interview Tóth cited Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s brilliant noiresque "Night Train" (1959) as an influence.

Its 1956 during the harsh Soviet crackdown  of the Hungarian Revolution. Istvan (Gergely Váradi) and Marta (Varga-Járó Sára) are two young lovers attempting to leave Hungary by train before the Soviets seal the borders. They are aboard with a motley crew of spies, criminals, revolutionaries, and the requisite priest (Károly Hajduk) an activist held prisoner by the Secret Police with only a book of chess moves to entertain him.

Marta, too, is a chess player, as is a mysterious chess aficionando (Pál Mácsai), who challenges her to a game.

Tóth is known for "Those Who Remained" (2019).

Loosely based on the events of the bloodless revolutionary day of March 15,1848,  Balázs Lóth’s “Now Or Never” adds fictional subplots to his musically stirring historical blockbuster, reputedly the second most expensive film in Hungarian history. (Still, that's a pittance compared to Hollywood Blockbusters.) The filmmakers set out to make an adventure story and to match Hollywood blockbusters in their visuals and atmosphere.

"Now Or Never" was funded by the National Film Institute of Hungary, and distributed by Fórum Hungary.

Lóth had never worked with state backing before and committed to to make every cent of that funding visible on screen. 

Npt wanting to make "a dusty historical film" Lóth decided to add romantic, humorous and adventure elements, much as Hollywood did in it's historical epics  during the Golden Age of The Studio System. Or, the musical Les Miserables. It's a smart strategy to engage younger audiences in a time unimaginably distant to their world. 

The script brings focus to Júlia Szendrey (Sára Mosolygó) wife and muse of Petőfi (Nándor Berettyán). She is portrayed as an almost modern woman, willing to defend her husband’s life against the brutal secret agent Farkasch (Ottó Lajos Horváth), Petőfi's foil in the fictional subplot.

Meticulous recreations of Pest's backstreets and well researched costumes (down to each extra) bring the period alive. 

Following on news of the February French revolution, revolution broke out in Vienna and Pest.

It all began at the Pilvax Café, where The Young Hungary movement (Sándor Petőfi, Mór Jókai, Pál Vasvári, and poets János Vajda and János Arany) gathered. The Tízek Társasága (Company of Ten) that included Petőfi and Arany, among others, also operated in the café. 

Hearing of the revolution in Vienna Sándor Petőfi   wrote the stirring “National Song” inflaming the hearts of the radical “March Youth” and later the people of Pest.

The young radicals published their demands in the form of the ‘Twelve Points’ formulated by journalist József Irinyi (played by Zsombor Ertl) radicalizing social thinking of the era.

This was the beginning of Hungary’s one-and-a-half-year Revolution and War of Independence. It was the longest European Revolution of 1848  (dubbed "The Springtime Of Nations") against the Hapsburgs. The bloodless mass demonstrations in Pest and Buda forced the Imperial governor to accept all twelve of their demands. The Russian Tsar helped qwell the insurrection. In 1849, after the failed revolution, there was nationwide "passive resistance".

Though the demands were rescinded, their bold ideas returned as law after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. 

Also premiering in LA are two highly touted Animated Features:

László Csaki’s animated documentary “Pelikan Blue” follows the travels of three friends Ákos, Petya and Laci, who scammed their way across Western Europe in the early 1990’s (after the fall of the Berlin Wall when the communist states had access to Western goods) using  clever lo-tech doctoring of Hungarian Railways paper tickets. They began helping friends clandestinely and morphed into a more ambitious method that drew fire from the Railway and the police. Hungary’s first animated feature documentary was based on an idea from “Son of Saul” producer Gábor Sipos  and composer/ actor Gábor Szentpáli,

Working from forty hours of taped interviews, the brisk film combines live action archival footage and animation illustrating  narration from the three forgers.

“Pelikan Blue”, which received finding from the previous iteration of the Incubator Program of the Hungarian National Film Institute, 

opened the Critics’ Picks Competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and played at Annecy to great acclaim.

Sarolta Szabó and Tibor Bánóczki's "White Plastic Sky" (2023) is set in a post-apocalyptic Budapest and the industrial town of Miskolc. Other locations include Lake Balaton, where The Plantation is found, a desert full of ruined cities, and the Slovakia’s Tatra Mountains. 

Unfortunately, with our impending Sixth Extinction, it doesn’t take much imagination to propel us forward to this view of our future. Science Fiction has never been more prescient nor terrifying.

The filmmakers research into current science, using geologists, botanists, and meteorologists as consultants gives a strong scientific base to their dystopic world building, though their imagination fills in the humanist story.

It’s 2123. With scarce resources human life continues in domed cities (Budapest). As in “The Time Machine”, "Logan's Run" and “Soylent Green” there’s a time limit placed on human life: In this case fifty years. 

In this dystopian vision, humans don’t become Soylent Green foodstuff rather they’re transformed into trees, which produce much needed oxygen and whose nutritious leaves feed the next generation.

28-year old Stefan (Tamás Keresztes) is a psychologist who counsels people to accept their 50-year death sentence, and that of their loved ones. ( It’s not a new idea, think of Japan's practice of ubasute, abandoning their elderly on a mountain top)

Suicidal from losing their child, his 30-year old wife Nora (Zsófia Szamosi) elects to complete he implantation procedure 18 years early. Without telling Stefan.

Grief stricken, and despite his profession, hardly accepting, Stefan sneaks into the Implantation facility, and with the help of a subversive scientist, determines to discover. away of reversing the process.

Think of it as a Eco-Orpheus story. In search of his Euridice Stefan and Nora cross the ruined landscape in search of the rebel scientist Professor Paulik (Géza D Hegedűs) who can possibly save Nora. Their journey becomes a sort of humanist honeymoon. Until the Professor reveals a cruel secret, leaving them  with harsh moral dilemma

Hand-drawn characters, using classic rotoscope techniques, emote in front of backgrounds (and spectacular textured wide-shots of nature) In 3D. The filmmakers story boarded everything

The low budget feature was originally funded by the Hungarian Film Fund, which fulfilled a promise to lift the project out of the Incubator Program so it could receive more money. 

The filmmakers went into co-production with Slovakia. and managed to secure more funds from the National Film Institute Hungary, the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, Eurimages and RTVS - Radio and Television Slovakia.

White Plastic Sky is a co-production between SALTO FILMS (Hungary) and ARTICHOKE (Slovakia). Hungarian based Proton Cinema's founder Viktória Petrány served as an advisor.

Also showing is Yourgos Lanthimos’s 2023 festival darling “Poor Things”, the gothic-erotic Steam Punk fantasy. Exquisite Academy Award winning production design by Shona Heath and James Price ("Paddington 2") and art direction by Jonathan Houlding, Géza Kerti ("The Duke of Burgundy") and a team including James Lewis, Adam A. Makin, and Hungarian artists Renátó Cseh, Judit Csák, Bence Kalmár, Zsófia Kóthay, Krisztina Szilágyi and set decoration by Lead Zsuzsa Mihalek and Peter Várdai took the film to an astonishing level. Using tradition Hollywood effects like painted backdrops (based on classic paintings) and miniatures, mixed with rear screen projection and LED screen, the team created a Steam Punk revery. Shona Heath produced surrealist tableaus to illustrate the chapter headings. James Price, Shona Heath and Set Decorator Zsuzsa Mihalek received the Oscar.

Venue:
Lumiere Cinema @ Lumiere Music Hall
9036 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211

Tickets are free with reservations. To RSVP go to https://culture.hu/us/new-york/events/made-in-hungary---hungarian-film-festival-in-los-angeles

25 October (Friday)

5:00 – 6:50 WHITE PLASTIC SKY / MŰANYAG ÉGBOLT – 1st Feature Film

7:00 – 9:00 

Opening Film: NOW OR NEVER / MOST VAGY SOHA!

26 October (Saturday)

3:00 – 4:50 ALL ABOUT THE LEVKOVICHES / LEFKOVICSÉK GYÁSZOLNAK – 1st Feature Film

5:00 – 6:50 SOME BIRDS / VALAMI MADARAK  – 1st Feature Film

7:00 – 9:00 MASTERGAME / MESTERJÁTSZMA

27 October (Sunday)

3:00 – 4:50 CAT CALL / CICAVERZUM – 1st Feature Film

5:00 – 6:50 PELIKAN BLUE / KÉK PELIKAN – 1st Feature Film

7:00 – 8:00 MADE IN HUNGARY Award Ceremony

8:00 – 10:00 POOR THINGS

Ott találkozunk !