Hungary 2011

Márta Mészáros (born September 19, 1931 in Kispest, Hungary) is a Hungarian film director. She worked as an English Teachersmeaning? filmmaker in the 1960s, but in the following decade began making films drawing on the oppression of both state and gender. In the 1980s, she created the autobiographical Diary series of films.

She married Miklós Jancsó in 1960; though they later divorced, their two sons, Nyika Jancsó and Miklós Jancsó Jr., have separately worked as director of photography on many of her films. In 1978 she directed the film Just Like Home, which starred Anna Karina.

She later became romantically involved with the Polish actor Jan Nowicki. After having lived together for many years, they split up in 2008. Nowicki starred in many of her films, including the principal role in The Unburied Dead. His son from an earlier relationship, Łukasz Nowicki, starred in Mészáros’ Kisvilma. Mészáros became widely known in Poland and has directed some cinema and TV productions there.

Her critically acclaimed film Napló apámnak, anyámnak was produced in 1990. She directed a film about Imre Nagy in 2003–2004, titled The Unburied Dead. —Wikipedia

Péter Forgács (1950) media artist and independent filmmaker, based in Budapest. Since 1978 he has made more than thirty films and several media installations. He is best known for his “Private Hungary” series of award winning films and installations often based on home movies from the 1920s-1980s, which document ordinary lives that were soon to be ruptured by an extraordinary historical trauma that occurs off screen.

Since the early 1990s Forgács’ video installations have been presented at museums and art galleries throughout Europe and America. His international debut came with The Bartos Family (1988). Since then he has received several international festival awards – in New York, Budapest, Lisbon, Marseilles, San Francisco and Berlin, where he won the Prix Europa for Free Fall film in 1997. Between 2000-2002 Forgács was artist in residence at The Getty Museum/Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, where he created The Danube Exodus: Rippling Currents of the River installation. His works can be found in several museums and public collections. In 2007 Forgács was awarded with the most prestigious Dutch Erasmus Prize for his notable contributions to European culture. In 2009 Forgács represented Hungary at the Venice Biennale, exhibiting the Col Tempo- The W. Project installation. —forgacspeter.hu

Born in Budapest in 1974, Benedik Fliegauf learnt all aspects of his trade. After training as a stage designer, he worked on film sets, for instance as assistant director to Miklós Jancsó and Árpád Sopsits. He also worked as an arts journalist and made television documentaries for various Hungarian broadcasters. Even without the official sanction of the film academy, he soon convinced the trade of his talent and skills. During the preparations for HYPNOS / HYPNOSIS (2002), the short in which he addressed the taboo subject of incest, he came to the attention of the producer András Muhi. The producer invited Fliegauf along to the Inforg Stúdió, a workshop for experimental film founded in 1999. Fliegauf has completed his films there ever since. After the festival distinctions won by his lowbudget RENGETEG / FOREST were matched by a good run at Hungarian art-houses, Fliegauf’s name was established on the Hungarian film scene. He has so far made three highly distinctive full-length fiction films, one long documentary, and a handful of experimental shorts. His films have attracted attention at festivals around the world. RENGETEG / FOREST won the Wolfgang-Staudte-Preis for best debut feature at Berlin in 2003, and TEJÚT / MILKY WAY (2007), his third feature, received the Golden Leopard in the “Contemporary Filmmakers” category at Locarno. DEALER / DEALER, his best-known work so far, was celebrated on the European festival circuit and won the Best Director award at goEast in 2004.