Hungarian Film Guide 2001 [antikvár]

Dear Filmmakers, Dear Friends, It was 105 years ago that the agent of Auguste and Louis Lumiere, the inventors of the camera and the projector, arrived in Budapest. Hungary was then commemorating the millennium of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian basin. Film recordings were made of the parade in the celebrating city which are the oldest surviving film documents of our country. The first Hungarian motion picture premiered in spring 1901, that is exactly 100 years ago. The film, which consisted of 27 parts, was made by Béla Zitovszky and it was called The Dance. In the hundred years that followed Hungarian cinematography made an indelible inscription in the history of world cinema. The new millennium provides us with an opportunity to look back on the past. And what better advice can we give to those who wish to get an image of Hungary in the last century than to go and see Hungarian films? Although contemporary newsreels also tell of what happened, but they are only details of reality. They fail to tell the whole story, an essential part of which is the profoundly human aspect. But films describe us faithfully, they express everything this country was or sought to become. Because the power of imagination, fantasy and fairy tales encourage us to be sincere. Ever since the Tower of Babel we have been searching for a means beyond language through which we can express ourselves and be clearly understood by all. And as Béla Balázs wrote in the 1920s, it is cinematography which promises to redeem humanity from the curse of Babel. Prominent figures of Hungarian cinematography, as well as their courage and sincerity may give both force and example for today's artists. For their task is quite similar. To make films through which the country we are currently living in may be known in another hundred years' time. Budapest, 3 May 2001 -iUcDjj^ Ferenc Mádl President of the Republic of Hungaiy