Budapest Classics Film Marathon: Restored Masterpieces on Big Screen
The Hungarian Film Fund’s digital film restoration programme
The Hungarian National Film Archive is operating under the wings of the Hungarian National Film Fund since January 2017. In the framework of the National Digitalization and Film Restoration Programme launched by the Film Fund in 2017, more than 150 masterpieces of the Hungarian Cinema should be restored in five years. By now, 35 films have already been restored by the Hungarian Filmlab under the professional guidance of the Film Archive. Among others, 13 classics by Zoltán Fábri (including the Oscar nominee Boys from Paul Street and Cannes Festival selected Merry-go-round and Anna), the Camera d’Or-winning My 20th Century by Ildikó Enyedi, 9 films by István Szabó (including the Oscar-winning Mephisto, Cannes Jury Prize winning and Oscar-nominated Colonel Redl, the Silver Bear-winning and Oscar-nominated Confidence), 4 films by Sándor Sára (including the Upthrown Stone that ran for the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 1968), Two of Them by Márta Mészáros starring Marina Vlady and Vladimir Vysotsky, full-length animations by Marcell Jankovics (Oscar-nominee and Cannes Festival winner animation film director) and the hilarious animation-feature the Cat City by Béla Ternovszky.
Cat City by Béla Ternovszky
In previous years, silent films such as the Undesirable by Kertész Mihály—later world famous as Michael Curtiz—have been restored to the initiation of the Hungarian Film Fund, but from this year due to the film restoration programme every year more and more silent films will be renewed. The 100-year-old Man of Gold (Az aranyember) by Sándor Korda (Alexander Korda) was the first title to be reborn by the Film Archive and the FilmLab. The Film Archive preserves in it’s vaults 400 titles on nitrate prints but only about 60 titles remain from the silent film era, representing 7% of Hungary’s total silent film production. The Film Archive keeps searching existing copies of the Hungarian silent film heritage with the help of the FIAF network and this effort is not in vain, in the previous years a lost Michael Curtiz film (Last Dawn) has been found and completed by the Dutch EYE Filminstitut and Filmarchiv Austria, seven lost titles were identified by the Serbian Film Archive and a title from 1914 (Working coat) has also been found in EYE Filminstitut. This one is the only motion picture starring Géza Hegedűs, one of the most popular actors of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in the beginning of the 20th century.
The Film Archive also relaunched its DVD releasing and book publishing activity. More than 30 titles have been out since last year on DVD and from this year on the Archive will present also films from outside of Hungary such as Lumière! L’aventure commence by Thierry Frémaux. The first books that the Film Archive will publish this year are John Cunningham’s book on István Szabó and Alan K. Rode’s Michael Curtiz, A Life in film.
Budapest Classics Film Marathon 2018
The first Film Marathon was organized in November 2017 and during the three days of the festival more than 5000 people attended screenings of restored masterpieces and hundreds took part in the professional programmes.The 2nd Budapest Classics Film Marathon kicks off with an all-day film workshop and conference in the Institut Français on 4 September, with the participation of the directors of European film archives. The topic is digital restoration and film in education. The programme of the opening evening will be a screening of the restored Mephisto in Uránia cinema on 4 September, attended by István Szabó, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Lajos Koltai.
Mephisto by István Szabó
The audience can once again count on a true movie marathon: more than 60 films in six days projected at the Toldi and Uránia cinemas and elsewhere. As György Ráduly, director of the Film Archive, put it: “The aim is to show, in a novel and interesting way, valuable, recently restored classical films that represent a part of the Hungarian and universal film heritage, reach out to young people, shed the spotlight on rarities and ‘re-orchestrated’ popular films—all on the big screen as a true cinematic experience.”
Claudia Cardinale, one of the most significant figures in European film, will be present at the six-day event, meeting the audience on the occasion of the screening of The Leopard by Luchino Visconti and 8 ½ by Federico Fellini. Jean-Marc Barr accompanies the cult film of generations, The Big Blue, to Budapest. The programme also features restored early masterpieces by István Szabó, Father, Love Film, and Meeting Venus with Glenn Close in the lead role, shot in 1992, not to mention Sunshine, 1999, starring Ralph Fiennes. There are also silent films such as W.G. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box, the co-screenwriter of which was the Hungarian László (Ladislas) Vajda, Jenő (Eugen) Illés’s Mania made in a German-Polish coproduction with Pola Negri in the title role, and there will be a premiere screening, the restored version of Man of Gold made by Sándor Korda 100 years ago, complete with live musical accompaniment.
The Leopard by Luchino Visconti
Animation films featured on the programme will include the restored Johnny Corncob by Marcell Jankovics, Zsolt Richly’s and Marcell Jankovics’s Háry János, John Halas’s (János Halász) Animal Farm, and a work never before shown in Hungary by Jean Image (Imre Hajdú), plus a short animation film block that includes the Oscar-winning The Fly and the recently restored Cat City. Ingmar Bergman’s colleague and producer Katinka Farago (Cries and Whispers; Scenes from a Marriage; Autumn Sonata; Fanny and Alexander, etc.) is in conversation with István Szabó about Ingmar Bergman, followed by Bergman’s beautiful Mozart film, The Magic Flute, highly recommended for children as well. One section traces a Central European ‘secret’ exactly a century after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1918). The Grand Budapest Hotel is at the centre, along with those Hollywood films with associations to Central Europe (directed by Ernst Lubitsch, William Wyler, Frank Borzage, etc.) that inspired the Wes Anderson movie.
The programme pays tribute to the work of the ‘Cannes Classics’ with films from this year’s selection. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Randal Kleiser’s Grease, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, Vittorio de Sica’s masterpiece Bicycle Thieves, and Vertigo by Hitchcock, rated as one of the best films in the world. ‘Cannes Classics’ selected already three times restored Hungarian films (The Round-Up by Miklós Jancsó, Love by Károly Makk and Zoltán Fábri’s Merry-Go-Round). Amadeus by Milos Forman, evergreens by Ernst Lubitsch, The Duellists by Ridley Scott,Once Upon a Time in the West, a lecture on the history of 3D from the turn of the century to today, and so much more on the programme in six days.