An Educational Corpus Based Exploration of Contemporary Hungarian Cinema: Lessons of the 2021 Hungarian University Film Awards

Abstract

This paper explores the origins, pedagogical aims and framework of the Hungarian University Film Award (HUFA) incorporating the personal experience of its author who participated in the coordination of various stages of the initiative. It claims that the initiative created a unique learning environment—an educational corpus comprising of six films from 2019 competing for the awards—and describes the methods and conceptual angles used in class discussions. The first part of the article outlines the interpretive framework offered for students to better grasp the general aesthetic and generic patterns at work in the corpus, including the emergence of a medium concept film in Hungarian film culture. The second part introduces another framework that helped students to contextualize the corpus by organizing films into two groups based on festival appearances and international visibility. The final part of the paper focuses on interpretations proposed by students, the ways they used the analytical methods of integration and differentiation while addressing the HUFA-corpus. This includes reconstructing key arguments as to how in-class debates mapped up, compared, and criticised the manifold strategies films employ to raise awareness towards traumatic experience. The pedagogical benefits of the initiative were most apparent in this stage, where students were expected to consider both individual films and an overarching trauma-discourse.

Keywords:

• Hungarian University Film Award
• project structure
• Hungarian cinema
• screen pedagogy
• comparative analysis
• in-class debates

Acknowledgements

This article was supported by the Janos Bolyai Research Grant of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the Research Grant of the New National Excellency Programme (UNKP-21-5) of the Hungarian Ministry of Human Resources.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This is a revised, amended version of an article published in Hungarian in the 2021/4 issue of the online academic journal Apertúra.

2 HUFA is an independent award and has no links to any long-standing Hungarian film festivals. Its parent organization is the Hungarian Society for Film Studies (HSFS) and the Film Education Research Group within it, also led by Pócsik. HSFS supports the deliberation meeting and presents the award at its annual international conference each autumn.

3 These were Fire At Sea by Gianfranco Rosi (Fuocoammare, 2016), The War Show by Andreas Dalsgaard and Obaidah Zytoon (2016), Tarzan's Testicles by Alexandru Solomon (Ouale lui Tarzan, 2017), and Saudi Runaway by Susanne Regina Meures (2020).

4 In his introduction to a special issue of Hungarian cinema journal Metropolis on post-socialist documentary, Balázs Varga claimed that “the transformation of the public sphere, the reshuffling of the media industry, the appearance of commercial TV networks, the rise of digital culture, and the institutional changes of the film industry brought a new era in the infrastructure, production, and reception of cinema. According to many commentators, documentary films fell victim to this process.” (Varga 8)

5 The 2021 summer issue of Apertúra, a notable Hungarian film journal, dedicated a special issue to the HUFA initiative and, amongst others, featured three student research papers, all of which focused on trauma-related aspects of films in the corpus. Borbála László’s article titled “Túlélőhalottak. A poszttraumás állapot, a gyász és a gyógyulás fenomenológiája az Akik maradtak (2019) című filmben” [Deadly Survival. The Phenomenology of Posttraumatic Existence, Mourning and Healing in Those Who Remained (2019)] examined the haptic and bodily communication of characters and its potential to advance the work with traumas. Réka Anna Dávid’s “Sorsváltozatok a jelenlétben. Az újrakezdés lehetőségei Tóth Barnabás Akik maradtak és Török Ferenc 1945 című filmjében” [Variations of Fate in Presence. The Possibility of a New Beginning Barnabás Tóth’s Those Who Remained and Ferenc Török’s 1945] offered the comparison of the two films mentioned in the title and examined how they portray traumatized identities either belonging to victims or collaborators. The piece authored by Renáta Oláh and Bence Varga (“‘Mert öleléssel kezdődik’. A gyermekek szexuális zaklatásának reprezentációja kortárs magyar és külföldi filmekben” [‘It All Begins with a Caress.’ Representations of Children’s Sexual Abuse in Contemporary Hungarian and International Cinema] explored—through a comparative analysis of Hungarian, Danish and American films—the narratives agency of institutions, families and individuals involved in stories about sexual abuse cases.

6 The positive assessment of runaway productions is not unanimous, as many employed in the field complain about stagnant salaries, overdue payments, mounting agency fees and unsatisfying working conditions.

7 According to Scott Roxborough and Rhonda Richford, the long-standing cult of the auteur in European cinema saw the emergence of a film culture in which one’s professional integrity as director is regarded to be more important than the moral integrity of the same person. As such, as the authors contend, “the debate about how to move forward in Europe is far more contentious than in the U.S., where the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements created a cultural flashpoint that demanded immediate change.” (Roxborough and Richford 2018, n. pag.)

8 Charlène Favier’s debut feature film Slalom (2020) did better at festivals, was even included in the EUFA 2020 shortlist, yet failed to do well at the box office.

9 The first Hungarian film about cyber bullying, Mihály Schwechtje’ critically acclaimed I Hope You'll Die Next Time (Remélem legközelebb sikerül meghalnod:), 2018), enjoyed a steady following on Netflix despite receiving no state funding.

10 The love triangle calls to mind James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, a novel with numerous film adaptations and also a Hungarian version directed by György Fehér with the title Passion (Szenvedély, 1998). In Small Tales, fear rather than greed or passion serves as the psychological motivation to kill the husband.

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Zsolt Győri

Zsolt Győri is an assistant professor at the University of Debrecen. He edited and co-edited volumes on British and Hungarian cinema. With Ewa Mazierska he co-edited two books on popular music in Eastern Europe. His more recent edited publications include Postsocialist Mobilities (CSP, 2021), and Representations of Europeanness in European Cinema (DUPress, 2021). He serves as an associate editor of the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies and is a member of the steering committee of the Hungarian Society for the Study of Cinema.