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The 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising set the tone for the 37th Hungarian Film Week in Budapest (31 January to 7 February 2006). Never mind that the anniversary itself will be remembered officially nine months later — on 23 October 1956. For that historical event has been on every Hungarian’s mind over the past couple years and will continue to be so for the months to come. Indeed, every night during the Budapest festival you could view on Hungarian Television assorted newsreels and documentaries about the October Uprising, some of these augmented by talkshows with key eyewitnesses.

Meanwhile, another drama was unfolding before the very eyes of the festival crowd, one that served to underscore the tragic consequences of yesterday in the harsh light of the present day. For just recently, following the lead of Poland and the Czech Republic, the archives of the Internal Reactionary Prevention Unit of Communist Hungary (read: Hungarian Secret Police) during the Janos Kadar regime, have been opened to reveal the names of informers in the aftermath of the Hungarian Uprising. One of these was Istvan Szabo, Oscar winner (1981) and Honorary Citizen of Budapest (1996). For many, it seemed hardly a coincidence that the revelation, printed in the weekly Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature), made media headlines just five days before the festival’s opening night gala — the world premiere of Istvan Szabo’s Rokonok (Relatives), a remake of Felix Mariassy’s 1954 comedy classic about corruption in a provincial town.

Called upon to explain his position in a string of television interviews, Szabo reluctantly admitted to having written 48 documented reports for the Secret Police on his professors and fellow students at the Budapest Film Academy, as well as reporting on some prominent actors and directors. Queried as to his reasons for acquiescing to interior intelligence demands, he responded that he felt himself blackmailed by the authorities because of the student demonstrations that had sparked the Uprising. Further, he claimed to have saved the life of a fellow-student, Pal Gabor — best known for his awarded Angi Vera (1974), a pointed indictment of the postwar Communist system — who was about to be sentenced to death for his involvement in the aborted revolution.

Since the late Pal Gabor (1932-1987) is no longer around to verify Szabo’s statement — nor, for that matter, another fellow-student Imre Gyöngyössy (1930-1994), who was also named in Szabo’s interview — the lot fell to other eyewitnesses to set the record straight in that crucial year following the Hungarian Uprising. So it was that colleagues from the Budapest Film Academy — Judit Elek, Janos Rozsa, Zsolt Kezdi-Kovacs, among others — called a meeting in the middle of the festival to declare their support for a pale and troubled Istvan Szabo. This open-ended give-and-take before running cameras was the highlight of the 37th Hungarian Film Week, a moment that few will forget who attended that painful breast-beating affair, a collective confession that maybe should have been aired a decade ago. In general, the tone of that gathering was forgiveness. Zsolt Kezdi-Kovacs, for instance, went so far as to admit that some students had no choice but to work behind the scenes as quasi-informers at the film academy, delivering information that was already well known or of little relevance in any case. That news, of course, didn’t surprise those foreign journalists at the festival whose regular beat in the past had been covering socialist cinema from East Berlin to Moscow.

Upon hearing and weighing the range of excuses, explanations, and self-revelations harbored over the years by Istvan Szabo, one Hungarian critic hit the nail on the head when he observed: »What can you say about a director who has made a film about himself many times over!« In other words, Istvan Szabo »directed himself« in Mephisto (1981, Oscar for Best Foreign Film), Colonel Redl (1984, Oscar Nomination), Hanussen (1988, Oscar Nomination), and Taking Sides (2001) on the Wilhelm Furtwangler affair during the Nazi era. To be sure, these Szabo »classics« now take on new depth and different meaning against the background of the 2006 festival exposé.

As for Szabo»s Relatives, this light-handed political comedy was a respectable hit at the 37th Hungarian Film Week, with the director and cast receiving a round of polite applause at the gala opening. And since Szabo is still a kingpin in the ever evolving European Film Academy, Relatives appears assured of a broad European release. Furthermore, the film is lensed by Lajos Koltai, Hungary’s best known cinematographer and a long-time collaborator with Istvan Szabo. Also, since the story focuses on corruption and racketeering in a shading enterprise known as »Pig Breeding Co,« there are some muted references to current political shenanigans in and out of Hungary. But festival directors might be well advised to screen Relatives as a double-bill with the Felix Mariassy original. After all, Szabo had studied film direction under Mariassy at the Budapest Film Academy (1956-61).

For the first time in the history of the Hungarian Film Week, an international jury was summoned to decide on the winners. Headed by Dimitri Eipides, the jury awarded the Grand Prize to György Palfi’s Taxidermia, whose Hukkle (Hiccups) (2002) won him a trip to Sundance, where this second feature was penned. The title refers to the surprising taxidermist finale of a grandfather-father-son relationship that stretches from the Second World War over Socialist Hungary to the present day. Partly horror, occasionally porno, uncomfortably violent, and completely crazy from beginning to end, Taxidermia begs description — it is as weird as it is perverse. Hajdu Szabolcs’s Feher tenyer (White Palms) received the Best Director Award. A scrutinizing portrait of training methods for young gymnasts at the Olympics, White Palms draws on autobiographical experiences and factual material to weigh the pros and cons of subduing promising teenage athletes to rigorous training methods that might well rob the youngsters of their childhood. Taxidermia and White Palms were also ex aequo winners of the Gene Moskowitz Critics Award.

A new Hungarian cinema is already visible on the horizon. Reforms are guaranteed in the new film law, coproduction funding is now readily accessible, and a modern production studio in Budapest has reached beyond the planning stage. Despite the bumps in the road and rather unwarranted media attacks on an Hungarian legend, the excitement at the 37th Hungarian Film Week was contagious. All you have to do is to check www.hungarianfilm.com for the latest monthly news.

Ron Holloway