web analytics
Saturday, March 25, 2023
No Result
View All Result
Budapest Reporter
  • industry
  • reviews
  • production
  • interviews
  • Find Your Partner
  • industry
  • reviews
  • production
  • interviews
  • Find Your Partner
No Result
View All Result
Budapest Reporter
No Result
View All Result

Feminity in Hungarian cinema – in the spotlight: Márta Mészáros

Budapest Reporter by Budapest Reporter
2021-07-21
in hungarian filmmakers, industry
Reading Time: 3 mins read
Feminity in Hungarian cinema - in the spotlight: Márta Mészáros

Feminity in Hungarian cinema - in the spotlight: Márta Mészáros

ADVERTISEMENT

Márta Mészáros’s 1984 film Diary for My Children, in a restored version, is currently screening at Cannes Classics, but the director has come a long way to get here.

Márta Mészáros, the pioneering Hungarian filmmaker who will turn 90 in September, has always looked young for her age. When she wanted to study filmmaking in her home country in the late 1940s, she was told, “We don’t need anyone from kindergarten!” She was fluent in Russian, having lived in Russia for much of her childhood, so she moved to Moscow, where gender was at its peak.

“There weren’t that many female filmmakers in those days”, she tells. “That a woman wanted to have that career was a joke. All the men laughed at me.”

Mészáros laughed the last. She spent a decade making documentaries about the lives of ordinary people, such as teachers and factory workers and perfecting her dynamic visual style. In 1968, she became the first woman to direct a feature film in Hungary.

“The girl”, about a young woman trying to find her biological parents, is as radical and vivacious as anything from the new French or Czech waves. It begins with the camera moving along a line of women practicing archery. In her persistent curiosity about each one of them, she seems to ask: What do they want? How are they going to get it? And how will society (the men, in general, who swarm ominously around women in so many of his films) try to thwart them?

Her feature films, which have attracted artists such as Isabelle Huppert, Anna Karina, and Delphine Seyrig, retain the immediacy of her early documentaries.

Márta MészárosMészáros has been staggeringly prolific, making roughly one movie a year through the late 1990s, with no mundane setting between them. Somehow, she also landed several marriages, including one to another groundbreaking Hungarian director, Miklós Jancsó, who made “The Round-Up”. (Some of her films have been shot by her son, cinematographer Nyika Jancsó.)

In 1975, she became the first female director to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival. Her topic was controversial: A woman in her 40s longs for a baby from her married lover but doesn’t want him to leave his wife.

The third major phase of the director’s career was the 1980s, when the Diary trilogy was produced, “Diary for My Children” (1983), “Diary for My Lovers” (1987), “Diary for My Father, My Mother” (1990). Also made during this period was the fairy tale film “Little Red Riding Hood “(1988). In “The Fetus” (1993), she returned to the depiction of the specific problems of women’s lives.

Although Diario’s autobiographical films – starting with “Diary of My Children”, for which he received the Special Grand Jury Prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival -, she was never able to address the subject as explicitly as he would have liked. The death of her father, a sculptor killed in the Stalinist purges, was outside the limits of a regime that did not tolerate criticism.

“I wanted to show in a political drama what happened to my parents because of the Soviet Union: my father was executed and my mother died of a broken heart. They shouldn’t have died that way. It was the censorship that prevented me from addressing that directly. “

Márta Mészáros has made more than fifty films and said she would rather make films on her ninetieth birthday.

Tags: CannesdirectorFilmmakingMárta Mészáros

More like this

Hungary Takes the Lead in Film Production with €11 Million Virtual Studio Investment
industry

Hungary Takes the Lead in Film Production with €11 Million Virtual Studio Investment

2023-02-10
BTL Workers of the Film Industry: The Hair & Make-up Artist
featured

BTL Workers of the Film Industry: The Hair & Make-up Artist

2022-10-26
CineFest Miskolc – you can catch the biggest films of 2022 in September
production

CineFest Miskolc – you can catch the biggest films of 2022 in September

2022-08-26
Hungarian cinematographer made Zendaya fall in love with filmmaking
industry

Hungarian cinematographer made Zendaya fall in love with filmmaking

2022-01-25
bpr-vranik-title-content-main
industry

The first film from Joseph’s point of view – interview with Roland Vranik

2022-01-18
Films are flowing into studios, but there are fewer and fewer film professionals in the world
industry

Films are flowing into studios, but there are fewer and fewer film professionals in the world

2022-01-17
Load More

Latest news

BPR Newsflash - New Projects by Gunn, Del Toro and Tarantino
featured

BPR Newsflash – New Projects by Gunn, Del Toro and Tarantino

2023-03-23
DIGIC - The Next Chapter
interview

DIGIC – The Next Chapter

2023-03-21
Hungarian Oscar Dinner to Celebrate Past and Present Accomplishments
featured

Hungarian Oscar Dinner to Celebrate Past and Present Accomplishments

2023-03-18
Medium Voltage - Shazam! Fury of the Gods Review
review

Medium Voltage – Shazam! Fury of the Gods Review

2023-03-16
Int’l Quorum of Motion Picture Producers to Meet in Budapest This Year
industry

Int’l Quorum of Motion Picture Producers to Meet in Budapest This Year

2023-03-16
Origo Studios Successfully Scales Up Post-Prod Environment
industry

Origo Studios Successfully Scales Up Post-Prod Environment

2023-03-14
ADVERTISEMENT
Budapest Reporter

© 2022 BPR Publishing

Navigate Site

  • Impressum
  • Advertisement
  • Business Directory
  • Privacy and Data Protection

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Industry
  • Review
  • Production
  • Interview
  • Gossip

© 2022 BPR Publishing