Ron Holloway, Berlin, 21 June 2006
Until last year, Hungary did not have an international competition festival for feature films, although devotees of Hungarian cinema could nevertheless feast on a full slate of national productions each February at the Hungarian Film Week in Budapest. Indeed, over the past 37 years cineastes seldom missed this roundup of the year’s productions. Then, in 2005, Blanka Elekes Szentágotai, a young visionary Hungarian journalist writing from Budapest for Screen Daily in London, hit upon the idea of a competitive festival in the historic city of Székesféhervár (aka Alba Regia), where Stephen the First (aka St. Stephen) was crowned King of Hungary in 1001. Thereafter, the city remained the site for the coronation and burial of all Hungarian kings until 1526, when the country fell under the yoke of the Ottoman Turks.
Székesféhervár is an ideal festival city. Among its historical jewels are the splendid City Hall and Cathedral, the Bishop’s Palace and Franciscan Church, several baroque town-houses and museums. Since the festival title, “Alba Regia,” is Latin for “royal city,” the Grand Prize for Best Film is, of course, a replica of the Golden Orb held by the Hungarian king in his right hand. After a shaky but promising start last year, sponsors jumped on the ARIFF bandwagon, with key support coming from the 10-screen Cinema City Alba Plaza multiplex, the adjacent Hotel Novotel Szálló, and the local newspaper Fejer Megyei Hirlap. Indeed, the Second ARIFF (29 May 29 to 4 June 2006) gave every indication that it is now well on its way to becoming one of the important festival event in the so-called “CentEast” (Central-Eastern Europe) region.
Eleven films from twelve countries were selected for the competition. Another ten were screened in the out-of-competition “Bull’s Eye” sidebar, three in a “Route 66” American series, five in an “On the Top” Independents section, three in a “Ma Pics” Argentine directors tribute, eight in an attractive “Cinephile” films-about-films package, four in a retrospective tribute to American horror-movie specialist Joe Dante (The Howling, 1981), and a dozen more in conjunction with four Lifetime Achievement Awards – namely, to Hungarian actor Iván Darvas, French film composer Maurice Jarre, Hungarian-American cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond and Andrew László. With more than enough to choose from, plus free admission for students with an ID card, a young audience was visibly present at nearly all of the evening screenings. Indeed, the festival audience seemed to outnumber the regular mainstream fare at the Cinema City multiplex.
The International Jury, headed by veteran Hungarian-American cinematographer Andrew László, awarded the Golden Orb to Nanouk Leopold’s Guernsey (Netherlands/Belgium), a minimalist tale of silent alienation with a finely etched performance by Maria Kraakman as a wife and mother who supervises irrigation projects in Africa at the sacrifice of a personal life. The suicide of a female colleague out in the field forces her to reevaluate her career, but the options are painful. She must also contend with her husband’s adultery, while at the same time facing her own infidelity. The Best Actor Award went to Julius Lavonen for his role as a troubled youth committed to a clinic in Petri Kotwica’s Koti-ikävä (Homesick) (Finland) until the day comes when his mother is confronted as the cause of the lad’s withdrawal from society. Homesick, a rambling, low-budget film shot with a digital camera, played to a full house and was a clear audience favorite. The Best Actress Award went to Annika Hallin for her role in Sara Johnsen’s Vinterkyss (Kissed by Winter) (Norway), the story of a woman doctor who retreats to the far north to escape her guilt in the death of her young son. Slowly, in this winter landscape she finds her way back to human warmth and can eventually, abetted in part by the death of another son to an immigrant Iranian family, face her own culpability in the death of her son. Both Annika Hallin and Sara Johnsen are names to watch in Norwegian cinema.
Fortunately, two other juries awarded the best films in the festival. Piotr Trzaskalski’s finally crafted A mester (The Master) (Poland) was voted Best Film by the Students Film Jury. More a film metaphor than a narrative drama, The Master chronicles the painful journey of a wandering Russian circus performer through the Polish provinces. The skills of the self-proclaimed “master” knife-thrower are surpassed only by his feats of magic and deception. Played by Russian actor Konstantin Lavronenko – the father in Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Vozvrashchenie (The Return) (Russia, 2003) – the “Master” is able to help others who join his company, but shies fatally away from his own need for love and companionship. Michael Winterbottom’s A Cock and Bull Story (UK), awarded the Hungarian Film Critics Prize, was pure laughing pleasure for those who could catch the subtleties of British humor. An elongated spoof about the travails of a hapless film crew trying to piece together a screen adaptation of the Laurence Sterne’s classic The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, deemed “unfilmable” even by the producer and director, the inside jokes tumble one after another.
Thanks to programmer László Kriston, the “Cinephile” sidebar was a windfall for the cineaste. To begin with, the festival opened with some unknown documentary footage about the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, titled 1956 nyomában… (Looking for 1956…). Presented by the Hungarian National Film Archive, this stunning documentation is but a foretaste of what will be screened this coming October, when the Hungarian Revolution is due to be celebrated nation-wide as a national memorial. Another highlight was The Unknown Faces of Orson Welles, presented by the Munich Film Museum in collaboration with the director’s Croatian companion Oja Kodar.
Following the screening of some rather extraordinary and fascinating fragments from the Orson Welles legacy – namely, Orson Welles’ London (1968-71), Orson Welles’s Shylock (Shakespeare) (1938-1973), Orson Welles’s The Dreamers (Isak Dinesen) (1980-82), Orson Welles’s Moby Dick (Herman Melville) (1971), Orson Welles’s The Magic Show (1976-85), Orson Welles’s Unsung Heroes (1979), and The Spirit of Charles Lindberg (1984) – a panel discussion on “The Adventurous Years of Orson Welles and Oja Kodar” was moderated by László Kriston. It was Oja Kodar, after all, who was the author of the short story F for Fake, filmed by Orson Welles in 1974. It was to be the last original feature film that Welles scripted, directed, and acted in.
Awards
International Jury
Golden Orb – Best Film
Guernsey (Netherlands/Belgium), dir Nanouk Leopold
Best Actor
Julius Lavonen, Koti-ikävä (Homesick) (Finland), dir Petri Kotwica
Best Actress
Annika Hallin, Vinterkyss (Kissed by Winter) (Norway), dir Sara Johnsen
Film Critics Jury
BestFilm
A Cock and Bull Story (Poland), dir Michael Winterbottom
Special Mention
Guernsey (Netherlands/Belgium), dir Nanouk Leopold
Students Film Jury
Best Film
A mester (The Master) (Poland), dir Piotr Trzaskalski
Special Mention
A Cock and Bull Story (UK), dir Michael Winterbottom
Lifetime Achievement Awards
Iván Darvas (Hungarian actor)
VilmosZsigmond (Hungarian-American cinematographer)
Andrew László (Hungarian-American cinematographer)
Maurice Jarre (French film composer)