Hungary for a good film?
Janna Slack
For those art lovers heading to the Finno-Urgic region this spring, both Mediawave in Hungary and the Tampere Film Festival in Finland promise some choice offerings for the media-fair crowd. Though the language is incomprehensible, this little-celebrated part of Europe has much to offer in terms of the urbane, the traditional, and the opportunity to catch both new and celebrated filmmakers presenting their work.
In 1991, Mediawave International Visual Art Foundation was established by local and national non-profit film and music organizations in Hungary who joined forces in order to gain cultural strength and explore artistic possibilities in a country freshly out from under the thumb of communism. Though the foundation began in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, its founding members were artists who had carefully worked in the "tolerated-restricted" environment behind the Iron Curtain and, more or less, are still the fair’s organizers today. What began as a festival centered mainly on film and music, has become a more diverse event, featuring a bill of contemporary fine art, theater, dance and street art, as well as academic discussions of such topics as "Gypsies," "Red Light Centuries," and "Golden Ages."
The film division, however, is particularly significant to the European film scene–attracting such luminaries as Emir Kusturica and Vivi Dragan Vasile. The festival, through hard work and a deep belief in the value of putting Western and Eastern film culture side by side, was able to help reinstate the prominence of the Eastern European film, which had been languished so long, neglected by a Western establishment more or less ignorant of its existence. Finally, those talents who continued to express themselves cinematically regardless of creative oppression were given a platform from which they could enter the international discussion.
Festivals in former Soviet Republics are so unique because seldom, at least in my generation’s experience in the Western World, does one come into contact with artists who have worked under that level of censorship, that level of outright cultural brainwash. Indeed, if being "underground" gives validity to art nowadays, it doesn’t get much deeper, and therefore cooler, than those artists who worked in the Soviet Union.
However, for all their isolation, Soviet artists could look to bright points such as Vojvodina, in neighboring Yugoslavia, which had a relatively liberal art scene. It helped to influence the early Mediawave fairs, not only by providing encouragement, but because it had kept the more restricted Hungarian artists up-to-date. This artistic lifeline, as well as the community-forming experiment in Kisorspustza, Hungary, gave the festival its central mandate: exploring the "ways to authentically preserve folk culture [in] today’s conditions." This seeming oxymoron is the reason why the festival is critiqued as too traditional by the urbanists, too urbane by the traditionalists. However, from the beginning, the organizers found that the dual respect for the tradition and the modern, colliding and comparing them, has given the festival its consistent flavor through the years, regardless of what other trends flicker on and off the radar screen.
This "dual respect" is evident in the choice of venue for the festival. Though it is based in Gyor, organizers decided early on to seek out special outdoor, genuine (as opposed to tourist-trap) rural settings. These venues have included Novakpuszta castle and park, the Danube riverside at Venek, as well as assorted wine cellars and bastions. By fostering the newest art in such history-laden locations, the organizers keep loyal to the fair’s original, deeply patriotic purpose.
Finland has had it’s own special history with Russia, some good, some bad, some fighting for maritime control over what is now the Gulf of Finland. However, Hungary’s linguisitic sister never came under Soviet control, though she maintained her isolation through her own special combination of geographical position (Artic Circle, anyone?) and intimidating, super-model citizenry. However, peel back the layers of ice-hockey games and skiing marathons and the event-calendar of the city of Tampere includes Northern Europe’s oldest and biggest short film festival.
Short film festivals are unique and necessary in that they deal in a genre that–for all its talent and persistent activity–rarely finds an audience. In light of this, Ilkka Kalliomaki organized Tampere Short Film Days in 1969 as a one-time event. It was so successful, however, that 1970 saw the birth of the yearly Tampere Film Festival. The festival’s primary goal is to hold an international and a Finnish short film competition, with the additional mission of promoting short film sales and international cultural cooperation. Because the auteurs of short films tend to be recent film school graduates and those filmmakers short on funds, the Tampere festival generally attracts young, up-and-coming filmmakers who bring with them a young audience.
Though the primary attraction of the fair is the chance to see the best international short films in such venues as the Old Customhouse, the Halla theater, and the Kino-Palatsi film theater, the festival also offers a program of seminars for film professionals and enthusiasts. Over the course of three decades, though it has consistently reinvented itself, the Tampere Film Festival has remained relevant and interesting, regardless of its scant finances. And, because even the most celebrated feature filmmakers began their careers with humble short films, the necessity of Tampere and other short film festivals is obvious–these films and filmmakers must have a forum for discussion and growth.
And Mediawave and Tampere understand that need and continue to offer artists living in these previously underappreciated geographical regions the opportunity to enter and explore the local, national, and international forum. And we all benefit from this general tenant; with few exceptions, short films lead to features, which have become some of our cultures most treasured relics. It is easy to imagine that life would be a tad less interesting if "Here’s looking at you kid," "Party on, Wayne," Harvey Keitel rubbing a piano naked or Leonardo DiCaprio hanging over the bow of a ship had never entered the cultural lexicon. Well, perhaps we could have done without the naked piano-rubbing, but the point is, every country has similar tidbits of popular and haute culture that color the populace’s daily thoughts and conversations–sometimes crossing international boundaries. But all Curtizs and Campions begin as anonymous dreamers with an unseen handful of reels, praying for the audience that will eventually transform their abstractions into reality. The world’s Mediawaves and Tamperes provide the outlet for that transformation.
