If it’s summer, it must be drive-in cinema time. Must be so, even if this version of mass entertainment has been overtaken by the air-conditioned multiplex. Yet the choice fit for drive-ins is still wide: for some reason distributors are convinced that in summer anything, up to the dullest comedies and the most ridiculous horror films, will do. Movies of a higher calibre were put on ice. Fortunately, this summer the art cinemas have ventured to show Hungarian films as well and not only to tourists. Most unusually, short feature films are also on offer.

In recent years we have seen an almost complete halt in the production and distribution of short features. Now the shortage of money has revived them and so did the fighting spirit of film makers. Be it someone at the start of their career waiting to shoot a first movie or a well-established name, directors are no longer standing by idly, waiting for the big chance. They have decided to start shooting in the meantime, just as they are, with what they have got.

János Szász, who received the Europe Prize for his Woyzeck in 1994, has recently finished A Witman fiúk (The Witman Boys), his adaptation of a short story by Géza Csáth, and is about to embark on an adaptation of Imre Kertész’s novel about Auschwitz, Sorstalanság (Fatelessness). In- between these two full-length features, he decided to make a short feature and, once again, based on a literary subject. Jézus Krisztus menyasszonya (The Bride of Jesus Christ) is a pessimistic utopia by Péter Hajnóczy, a self-destructive alcoholic, who died young some years ago. Funeral was made with the meticulous care that is characteristic of Szász. Despite the fact that it runs for only 35 minutes, many who saw it were convinced that it would deserve first prize in the category of short and experimental feature films—if there had been prizes. It tells the story of one day in the life of a father and son, the story of the day the father goes to meet his death, and the son follows his father, but always avoiding each other. The movie is not an exact adaptation of the Hajnóczy book, it is more a question of drawing on some of its motifs, and its depressing atmosphere. Every frame oozes pure melancholy and the only comfort is the knowledge that at least the writer was able to find his release.

A Morel fiú (The Morel Boy), a forty-minute movie by János Xantus, was premiered recently. Xantus has to his credit works such as Eszkimó asszony fázik (Eskimo Woman Feels Cold) and Rock-térítő (Tropic of Rock), which have won both audience and critical acclaim. In recent years, however, he has been inactive, so The Morel Boy marks his return. Morel is the name of a fictitious multinational supermarket chain and the absurd events of the film take place in one of the outlets, where both of the main characters work: the talkative, loud-mouthed born winner and the dreamer who always loses out somehow. The latter is well acted by Szabolcs Hajdu, himself one of the most promising directorial talents of the younger generation. This hypermarket, with all its employees, customers and goods, is a metaphor of life presented by a film that is quite funny and not be taken too seriously.

Three short films by three young directors are being packaged together in one bill. Keresztutak (Crossroads) by Mihály Győrik focuses on Budapest, or rather, on that part of it between the Petőfi Bridge and the Western Railway Station, along the number 6 tram line. This boulevard in Pest has had its name changed many times during the turbulence of recent Hungarian history, but it has always been known to one and all as the Nagykörút (the Grand Boulevard). This is where the paths of typical big-city figures cross and double-cross. We are allowed a glimpse into a day in their lives through their successful or unsuccessful, but nevertheless largely unobserved meetings. The film’s greatest virtue lies in small details, very well worked out and woven together.

It is questionable whether Roarsch by Daniel Young should be classed as a Hungarian movie at all. Suffice it to say that the production, the crew and most of the players, including the superb lead actor, are Hungarian; the important thing is that the pictures of the film are full of visual power. Roarsch is an American soldier stationed at the US base at Taszár in southern Hungary. One hectic day when he is on furlough, he has his papers and his service revolver stolen by some shady characters, who go on to blackmail him. In return for his possessions they demand his naive country girlfriend. To make matters worse, Roarsch is late reporting for duty on account of the complications. The story comes to light gradually as he is interrogated by Captain Weaver, his company commander. At first he tries to pass off some blatant untruths, but Weaver eventually forces him to tell the truth, and with it his whole chaotic life. The film uses a split screen and the black-and-white pictures evoke this other side of Hungary and of Budapest with remarkable intensity. This is not the world of glitzy tourist brochures and boasts about democracy, but the world of squalid rural houses, pock-marked back streets, shady bars and run-down tenements. The glamour of bright shops, fashionable cafés and American fast-food chains has not reached this dark underworld where the characters live their daily lives.

Antal Nimród’s film Biztosítás (Insurance) also takes us to a darker Hungary. Some hard cases gather in a shabby bar, engaged in their business of "helping" car owners with a money problem. They provide the service of crashing a client’s car badly enough for it to be an insurance write-off. Their most treasured possession is a list of models and the minimum speed at which they have to hit a wall or lamp post in order to achieve the desired result—and walk away unscathed. Occasionally, the list has to be modified; each time one of them has paid for the error with his life. Insurance is definitely worth noticing, but it is not much more than an exercise in the genre.

Many current Hungarian films transcend genre. There are some full-length features that could well be classed as documentaries, experimental films or simply non-fiction. A good example is I the Painter—The Life and Times of József Rippl-Rónai, directed by András Kroó. The movie was made in the wake of the great exhibition on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the death of Rippl-Rónai, which led to a re-discovery of the post-impressionist master. It makes use of diaries, letters and other documents of the time, as well as the paintings themselves. It could have been a documentary portrait film, despite its unusually long (91 minutes) running time, but instead the director opted for a fictional framework of the aging painter looking back on his life. The idea is good, but not so the realization; the documentary elements, the endless facts and the first person narrative somehow resist integration with the feature film elements. The full-screen shots of the paintings are remarkable, but it could be argued that these large blow-ups falsify the original pictures.

Pattogatott kukorica (Popcorn), by Péter Gábor, is a borderline case in more than one respect. Too short to be full-length, and too long to be a short feature, it has a pseudo-documentary embedded into its framework, with amateur actors and all the stylistic paraphernalia of a televised crime story. Béla Forintos and his wife make their living selling popcorn and are scrimping to meet their dream of having an apartment of their own and of adopting a child, for whom they have to pay quite a large amount of money to a desperate teenage mother. One day they have all their money filched by a shady character called Sutyi. With the police not exactly eager to help, Béla turns to two heavyweights who are his fellow Fradi supporters. (The Ferencvárosi Torna Club, or Fradi, is the Hungarian football club with the most fanatical and violent supporters, of whom the hard core is called B-közép, or B Central.) The two, Penge (‘Blade’) and Terminator are distinguished members of this group and, equipped with a hatchet, a baseball bat and a gun, they undertake to recover Béla’s money. We follow them as they visit Sutyi’s haunts in the underworld of the Eighth District in Pest; bars, markets, peep shows and the meat-racks where the cheapest prostitutes hustle. All they get are bruises and injuries until, in the end, they are arrested by the police commando squad and their prospects for the future are now two to eight years in prison. The film is hilarious from start to finish, studded with farcical elements such as the tottering of the two dumbos or their jargon, rivalled by the pushy pomposity of the TV reporter. But after a while the chase becomes repetitive, the money at stake insignificant and you can hardly wait for the whole thing to be over. The last minute, however, yields the unexpected realization that we have been watching a tragedy. These pathetic, petty people are all victims who have been playing with their lives and have become entangled in a difficult situation from which they cannot escape. After all, all they want to do is realize their humble dreams and assert their humble rights, and now they are in prison, confounded by the whole thing.

A mi gólyánk (Our Stork), an unclas-sifiable film by the renowned Lívia Gyarmathy, takes us to much more cheerful locations. This is the second quasi-documentary she has decided to make in-between two full-length feature films. The first, A lépcső (The Stairs, 1994) was about the failure of a Gypsy artisan who embarked on a bold venture. Our Stork is set in a small village, where some of these beautiful migratory birds come from Africa in early summer, nest and raise their young, before making the long and perilous return journey at the onset of autumn. But every year there are a few storks who for some reason do not return to Africa with the others. The film follows a year in the life of one such, who needs the help of the locals to survive the cold. During the winter it becomes virtually tame and it befriends the domestic animals. At the first sign of spring, it sets about repairing its nest. Soon the other storks arrive and courting begins. The mating period is eventually successful and three young storks are hatched. An especially touching scene is that where the parents are teaching the nestlings to fly, so that they can all make the journey back to Africa together. Our Stork is a fine and simple film, one which warms the heart.

Sitiprince (Prince of the Clink), directed by Edit Kőszegi, is a feature film with some documentary elements. it is based on the diaries of Rudolf Horváth, a peculiar nineteenth century figure who joined a group of wandering Gypsies as a young child and roamed Eastern Europe with them, from Cracow to Moscow and from Bucharest to Sarajevo. When he eventually returns to his Hungarian family at the age of fifteen, he finds himself in a permanent conflict: he longs to be back in the Gypsy camp, where life and love are free, but he is also drawn by the comforts of a normal life and career. This identity crisis is made worse by increasingly drastic interference on the part of the state, which seeks to constrain and regulate the lawless wanderers. Rudolf, not the greatest respecter of private property, is prosecuted for some petty offense and realizes that he is being framed for a series of murders. It is the usual story, the police are hard-pressed to solve the case of a serial killer terrorizing the whole country, and Gypsies perfectly fit the scapegoat role. The sequel is also familiar: the state propaganda machine starts churning and turns the Gypsies against the poor boy. For the ruling class he becomes a show-Gypsy, but for the Gypsies he is "the prince of the clink", a privileged traitor. The real wonder about this film is that the director managed to find a traditional extended Gypsy family, the Stanescu clan from Galati, Romania, for the role of the wanderers. For the Stanescus traditional Gypsy dress is no folklore pageant costume and their rapid Roma speech is not just lines to be learnt off by heart. They are not playing roles, they are simply living, telling, dancing and singing their own lives.

Júlia Szederkényi’s wonderful film Bóbita (Based on Sándor Weöres’s children’s poetry) also features Gypsy children. Several generations have now grown up on the marvellous poems Sándor Weöres (1913–1988), one of the great modern Hungarian poets, wrote for children. Through them not only did children learn to appreciate poetry but also the great musical, rhythmic and rhyming potential of the Hungarian language. As the director herself said: "This film is a gift to me—I have never done anything so effortlessly, without any doubts or fears. Sándor Weöres’s poems for children were one of my first memories… They are as clear, transparent and sharp as our dreams, and I listened to them and read them as if I were dreaming. That is how the film was made; I was happy to find my way home, to the liberty and purity of the five-year-old child I was, skipping alongside Sándor Weöres and grabbing his sleeve. My message to critics from abroad is that they should watch it and then they will want to learn Hungarian. And that will not be my doing." In the second half of this century, Sándor Weöres’s poems for children have been for Hungarian children what Mother Goose’s tales were for English-speaking children. For Weöres, poetry was an intrinsic form of living. The poems written for children only form a small fraction of his great oeuvre, and, what is more, the majority of these are not children’s poems in the traditional sense. They are full of amazing colour, light and movement, their melody and rhythm are easy to remember or recite. They are capable of carrying even the weightiest thoughts with the slightest of ease. I would never have thought that this poetry could be made into a film. On the other hand, it is an open question whether Júlia Szederkényi’s piece is a film at all, for it seemed more like one of nature’s miracles to me. We hear the poems, and they evoke the images themselves: little girls in long dresses, youngsters in a flowery meadow, blades of grass, drops of water, bugs, mushrooms, and young Gypsy boys marching along in their fathers’ coats and hats—all of them wonders of this world.