Above: Hungarian poster for The Girl (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1968). Designer unknown.
It is a banner month for Hungarian Cinema in New York. While the downtown Metrograph is showing six restored classics by the great Miklós Jancsó, uptown at Film at Lincoln Center a major retrospective of the films of the equally important Márta Mészáros starts today. Mészáros was married to Jancsó from 1958 to 1973 and they had three children together, but her quiet, observant, and very personal films could hardly be more different.
There is already an excellent primer to Mészáros’s films on Notebook (last year MUBI hosted the online retrospective Independent Women: The Pioneering Cinema of Márta Mészáros in many countries), so I direct you there for more information on her extraordinary life and 60-year career (she is now 90-years-old and made her last film just five years ago). Film at Lincoln Center is cramming eleven of her best films (she’s made 27 features and at least 33 short films) into six days and I have found posters for all of them. Most of them are from Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia—with a couple of more mundane examples from France and the UK—and while they are wildly different in style, they are noticeably female-centric, befitting one of the great filmmakers of women’s stories of our time. I present them here in all their idiosyncratic graphic glory.
Above: Polish poster for The Girl (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1968). Designer: Andrzej Krajewski.
Above: Hungarian poster for Binding Sentiments (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1969). Designers: Éva Kemény and Sós László.
Above: Czech poster for Binding Sentiments (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1969). Designer unknown.
Above: Hungarian poster for Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls! (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1970). Designer: György Kemény.
Above: Polish poster for Riddance (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1973). Designer: Jakub Erol.
Above: Czech poster for Riddance (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1973). Designer: Vasil Miovsky.
Above: Hungarian poster for Adoption (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1975). Designer unknown.
Above: Polish poster for Adoption (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1975). Designer: Lech Majewski.
Above: Czech poster for Adoption (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1975). Designer unknown.
Above: Hungarian poster for Nine Months (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1976). Designer: Helényi Tibor.
Above: Polish poster for Nine Months (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1976). Designer: Jakub Erol.
Above: Czech poster for Nine Months (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1976). Designer: Renáta Vlachová.
Above: Hungarian poster for The Two of Them (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1977). Designer unknown.
Above: Polish poster for The Two of Them (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1977). Designer unknown.
Above: Czech poster for The Two of Them (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1977). Designer: Karel Zavadil.
Above: Polish poster for The Heiresses (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1980). Designer: Hoffman.
Above: Hungarian poster for Diary for My Children (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1984). Designer unknown.
Above: French poster for Diary for My Children (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1984). Designer unknown.
Above: UK quad for Diary for My Loves (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1987). Designer unknown.
Above: Hungarian poster for Diary for My Father and Mother (Márta Mészáros, Hungary, 1990). Designer unknown.
The Films of Márta Mészáros is showing at Film at Lincoln Center in New York from January 21–26, 2022.