This year's Hungarian Film Week was pale: no sign of a masterpiece, nothing particularly outstanding. But this was a strong Film Week in both the number and quality of the films on display: development, vitality and the justification for domestic production were emonstrated. These were the two conflicting reactions to the feature films of the 2002 Film Week.
First, the hard facts. Boundaries were broken down: the number of features came to more than thirty; the number of shorts and documentaries in the programme had to be restricted; there were protests that the structure of the Film Week couldn't go on in its present form. The formula is simple: the Film Week is feature film oriented. It always was, but as long as no more than twenty films were being shown (of which half a dozen at the most were interesting) there was time left to pay attention to shorts and documentaries too. But if you have to watch more than twenty films over four days...
Film Week is a time for summing up. This is when the previous year's distribution figures, up to then shrouded in silence, and the reaction of foreign festivals come to light. The overwhelming consensus that the world isn't interested in Hungarian films, demoralizing to the producers, film-makers (and critics), and that Hungarians don't watch Hungarian films, seems to be coming unhinged. A hundred thousand viewers is no longer a once in a decade wonder, the main body of film-goers has grown ten times in comparison to the earlier number of admissions usually fluctuating between 700 and 7000 (and achieved with one or two prints of a film). Production, distribution, viewing and watchable films are now elements built onto one another. In order to get the public aroused, you need good films and/or a strong name. The latter is the more difficult. After all, for popularity you need awareness (continuous presence) on the cinema or television screen, but if there aren't many films, and television being what it is, the circle closes. Public opinion dates the crisis in Hungarian film to recent years, but with hindsight we can now see the situation as much worse: with the exception of one or two great directors, no one could have built up a film-maker's career here. The process is hectic: the fate of a film project or screenplay depends on pure chance, promising ideas never come to life. A decent success is no guarantee for the next film, a flop can have consequences that last for years. Even sadder is that whole generations have faded from the scene without the opportunity to make their name.
Given this, the appearance of young directors, with their first or second films, seems encouraging: the start of a career, the ability to stay on. Also it maintains the fact that there is life beyond the film academy and the big studios: there are workshops, communities, ivory towers and country fortresses... However almost unnoticed, the former strong bastion, the Balázs Béla Studio, their important state-financed workshop for experimentation. has quietly signed itself out from among them. The arrival of watchable films and films that find a niche audience has put a deserved end to the bogus debate over popular as against art film.

How thirty full-length feature films came to be made when the Hungarian Film Foundation (MMA) has to manage on a budget which shrinks year by year is a fascinating question. The annual budget for feature films is just about $1.5 million (the cost of a single decent video clip in the West); due to the opposition of film-makers, the state moneybags, under the cover name of a Film Centre, weren't opened. Meantime, private capital is held back by the claim that to produce Hungarian films, to invest in Hungarian films, means a guaranteed loss. I don't want to answer the question, nor am I in a position to do so. I can see with my own eyes, however, that recent films don't thrust certificates of poverty under audience's noses: the days of cheap movies when everyone involved was moonlighting are now over.