Judit Elek

1952, Budapest. Kati is thirteen years old when her mother dies. Her father works as a founder at the Miskolc foundry, deprived of his former position of director-engineer. Kati is left alone in their flat, transformed into a place crowded with tenants. That is, not quite: in her imagination her mother is alive again, for she still needs her.

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In the 19th century Austro-Hungarian Empire, David Hersko, a Jewish shepherd, witnesses the attack of a young girl. His home is burned down and he finds shelter with the family of a Jewish logger. The loggers find the body of a young woman which they bury, going against local laws. They are charged with her murder and it is believed that they killed her as a ritual murder.

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In 1866, the Szendrey family gathers for the name-day of Júlia’s sister, Mária, but the event dissolves into bitter grievances and the physical decline of the household. As the dying widow of the poet Sándor Petőfi, Júlia struggles with a failed second marriage while Mária grapples with jealousy over her own husband’s love for Júlia. The family’s fragile unity finally shatters under the suffocating weight of Sándor’s heroic legacy and the pervasive shadow of illnesses.

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A couple in love, but sadly married to other partners. What is to be done? A diagnosis of a comfortable but profoundly incapable society, a Hungary suffering from an endemic private life disorder, observable both among the urban middle and the rural lower classes. A descent into a relationship’s demise, more from the tired inertia of a country that has lost all direction and sense of purpose than any ill will.

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For this austere, clear and sharp telefeature, Judit Elek focused on the last months of Martinovics’ life: his interrogation by the Austrians, the examining Magistrate Schilling in particular, shown as a battle of wits as well as delusions on both sides. Elek had wanted to make this film in the early 1970s, but wasn’t allowed to. When she finally got the chance, the reactions were predictable, as the parallels with recent Hungarian history were simply too obvious for officialdom not to feel anxious. History may not repeat itself, but the variations look eerily similar.

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The second part of Judit Eleks long-term documentary about two girls and their lives in a small Hungarian village. What has become of their dreams and hopes?

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The first part of Judit Eleks long-term documentary portraits the lives of two girls in a small Hungarian village: Marika and Ilonka. As they grow up, they have to decide between working and learning or marrying at the age of 15 and living up to their parents' expectations.

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In March 1974, Hungarian television recorded a concert by Tamás Cseh and Ad Libitum as a live concert for two days (16-17) in the largest lecture hall of the Budapest University of Technology in front of a crowded student audience. The recording was made in black and white on magnetic tape by a car that drove up to the building.

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A television documentary about miners: the reality of their work versus how it is made to look and sound in the public sphere.

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Persuaded by the janitor's wife, a lively, but lonesome old woman, who is only attached to the world through her cherished objects and memories, decides to exchange her two-room apartment for a smaller one. For a little while her everyday life is changed. She meets and entertains new people every day.

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This two-part film examines the plight of the working class. In part one, an elderly factory laborer goes to work in his last days before he is forced to retire. He leaves the factory life he has always known and goes home to his wife. In the second part, a young farm boy goes off to an industrial trade school to prepare for the very work the old man left behind. The old man loses his freedom by forced retirement while the young man loses his freedom by becoming a worker faced with a lifetime of factory work.

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A look at the present use of several Hungarian castles whose former owners in some cases are still around, but kept out of sight for being relics of a society the new rulers finished off.

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A man, a woman, an afternoon, a city, and an unspoken, hopeful desire to find love by way of the personal ads. A milestone of Hungarian cinema, Elek uses documentary techniques in a fiction context to make the frailty of everyday life as palpable as possible.

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