After 1989

Hungarian Film & Television

Course 1 · Chapter 8 · After 1989: Tarr, Enyedi & Son of Saul

The end of the one-party state in 1989 ended the old studio system, and the money, audiences and rules of Hungarian cinema all changed. Funding became uncertain in the 1990s, cinema attendance fell, and many films were made on small budgets. Yet this was also a time when Hungarian directors won some of the highest prizes in world cinema. This chapter looks at Béla Tarr, Ildikó Enyedi, the thriller Kontroll, the strange films of the 2000s and László Nemes Jeles's Son of Saul. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

A Changed Industry

The end of the old system

After 1989 the state studios lost their guaranteed funding, and the Mafilm structure was broken up or privatised (check). Film makers had to find money from a mix of state grants, television and foreign partners.

Audiences

Cinema attendance fell sharply in the early 1990s as television, video and Hollywood imports took over (check the figures). Hungarian films competed for a smaller audience.

Festivals as a lifeline

Prizes at festivals brought distribution, money and attention, and so shaped which films were seen as Hungarian cinema abroad (Chapter 1). This is a reason to separate prize-winners from the wider output.

Five Names

Director and work (check each)Note
Béla Tarr (born 1955)Known for very long takes, black-and-white images and slow pace. Sátántangó (1994), adapted from László Krasznahorkai's novel (see Hungarian Literature 9), runs for around seven hours. A torinói ló (The Turin Horse, 2011) was announced as his last film.
Ildikó Enyedi (born 1955)Az én XX. századom (My Twentieth Century, 1989) won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes. Testről és lélekről (On Body and Soul, 2017) won the Golden Bear at Berlin and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Nimród Antal (born 1973)Kontroll (2003), a dark comedy-thriller set among ticket inspectors on the Budapest metro, was a hit at home and abroad (check).
György Pálfi and Kornél MundruczóPálfi's Hukkle (2002) and Taxidermia (2006) are highly unusual formal experiments. Mundruczó's Fehér isten (White God, 2014) won a prize at Cannes (check).
László Nemes Jeles (born 1977)Saul fia (Son of Saul, 2015) follows a prisoner assigned to a camp's Sonderkommando in a tight, close-focus style. It won the Grand Prix at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Slow cinema and the long take Tarr's films are central to the idea of "slow cinema", which uses duration to make viewers attend to space, weather and faces. Some find this intensely rewarding and others find it hard to watch, and it is a reminder that a famous director's work is not the same as the average Hungarian film. The link to Jancsó's long takes in Chapter 4 is real but the intentions differ (check how critics draw the connection).

The Holocaust on Screen

  • Son of Saul. The film puts the viewer at a close, narrow distance from one man's task in a camp, and keeps most of the surrounding horror out of focus (check the description). Its method was praised by many critics and questioned by others, who debated how the Holocaust should be shown.
  • Earlier films. Hungarian films had touched on the Holocaust before, among them Szabó's work and the film adaptation of Imre Kertész's Fateless (2005; see Hungarian Literature 8; check).
  • Handling the subject. Because the subject is sensitive, discussion should rely on survivors' testimony and historians, and should avoid treating the films as sources of historical fact.
A British comparison The British film industry also went through a collapse and rebuilding in the 1980s and 1990s, relying on television funding and later lottery money, and produced prize-winners at Cannes and Berlin (check). The Hungarian pattern of a few directors carrying the country's reputation abroad is similar, though the home audience for Hungarian-language film is far smaller.
Check the details Dates, prizes and running times are from general knowledge and vary between sources. Verify against festival records and film databases, and note that recent films and reputations change quickly.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Describe how the end of the state studio system changed the position of Hungarian directors after 1989.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Explain the idea of slow cinema using Tarr as your example, and say why it may not represent Hungarian film as a whole.

→ Solution
Exercise 3

Discuss why a film like Son of Saul prompts debate about how to show the Holocaust, and how a viewer should use such a film responsibly.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Change: state studios ended, funding uncertain, audiences down (check)
  • Directors: Tarr, Enyedi, Antal, Pálfi, Mundruczó, Nemes Jeles
  • Prizes: Berlin 2017 (On Body and Soul); Cannes and the Oscar for Son of Saul (check)
  • Link: Tarr and Krasznahorkai
  • The caution: festival films are not all Hungarian film