Before the night falls

Compared to the previous Verzio editions, this year’s program has fewer films addressing acute present daily problems, such as the refugee crisis and the centralized hate campaign launched in response. Sadly, this is what Hungary is now known for inter nationally. Nevertheless, we can only guess why the films avoid these topics. One possible explanation is that events follow one another with accelerating speed – as I am typing these lines the biggest oppositional daily is being shut down, and it is well possible that by the time you read this, we face yet another attack on free speech or independent organization. Only online news, internet reportage, and blog posts can keep up with the pace. We do not have the time to outrage, let alone soberly recording and analyzing the events. Of all the current events only the teachers’ protests appears to have been made into a memorable documentary Checkered Revolution by Dávid Kresalek and Dóra Soponyai. Balázs Horváth’s Days on Designers attentively follows the life of a couple of drug addicts while Klára Trencsényi’s Train to Adulthood covers not only the past and present of the Budapest Pioneers’ Railway, an interesting topic in its own right, but also the history of the family’s eviction. Of the documentaries on contemporary issues, only Adorján Czakó’s Balu’s story of a couple fighting hard for their seriously ill child ends on a hopeful note. Most films, however, focus on the past – yet not without lessons for the present. Admirable elderly twin sisters tell their stories in Linda Dombrovszky’s Once Upon a Time There Were Two Ballerinas and in Zsuzsa Pálffy’s Dancing for Life. It was dancing that helped the protagonists through the turmoil of Hungary’s turbulent past century, just as music helped the Klezmer musicians – as well as their ancestors – in Soul Exodus. Similarly, Márta Mészáros’ documentary My Mother’s Letters to Stalin is also about hope, which however, remains illusory, as all too often happened in our history. In last year’s Verzio catalog I wrote about the gradually darkening horizon; since then the sky above us has turned even darker. Yet, the dignity of the old ladies who have survived the inferno of the century, the merry singing of Jewish musicians who lived through centuries of persecution serve as a lesson and offer comfort. As Godard put it, “the twilight is the bearer of hope, not of hopelessness… Do not we take our best walks at the fall of night, when tomorrow’s hope is already there?”

György Báron
Hungarian Panorama curator