Cutting the Cloth

[...]

K. M.: In 1989, I was invited to sit on the committee of judges of a minor festival in Umbria, from where I went to Rome. Some Italian journalists, all of them old friends, came to see me at the Hungarian Institute, to talk about what was going to happen in Hungary. I said: "Well, what can happen? There will be freedom, there'll be no more wrangling, censorship will be at end, we'll live like kings." Then one of these Italian friends, who is a very well-known name in the Italian press, told me: "Look, Charlie, evergone in Europe is working hard trying to get some government money, and you are happy that the government is getting out of the business with all its money. Just mark my words, and remember what I've said!" Well, I'm remembering.

[...]

M. J.: What has happened to cinemas is the same thing what has happened to other businesses, the market itself has been bought by uninhibited, rapacious capital. It will exploit this market as long as it is alive, then it will retire, and that's all there is to it. Everything that the so-called Socialist regime managed to put together over forty years has been looted and dispersed, the spoils pocketed by people some of whom I could name. Even what they bought and for how much. There is little we can do after all that. There will be poverty on an enormous scale, and no buying power at all. That's the situation, and I just don't know what else I can say about it all. The only way out for the cinema would probably be a Film Law protecting national interests, but we now have our third government which is doing nothing, because it has no idea what to do about the arts in Hungary as a whole—and not only about the arts.

[...]

P. S.: I consider it my great fortune that I did not have to live through the complete disintegration of the profession, the emptying of studios, the dispersion of skilled staff for lack of work. For me this was a long period of preparation, out of which films may be born again. Before, I used to shoot a film every two years. Now there's been a break of eight or nine years. The world turned upside down and I became confused myself. Now I'm back where I was before, only the interval between two films is longer, and it will probably stay longer, too.

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Erzsébet Bori and András Bálint Kovács