Erzsébet Bori
Men Overboard
New Documentary Films
...
The revealing-investigative documentaries are disappearing.
With press freedom, this socially useful activity now takes place in the newspapers
and television. For the most part. Because the most significant and most sensitive
issues are beyond the scope of the previously mentioned channels: they often
demand Sherlock Holmes style detective work, secure legal backing and an incredible
amount of legwork. Great determination, not a little courage and the tenacity
of a hound. The films Ádám Csillag made show that he has these qualities.
For years he has been occupied with the ramifications of the Danube dam issue
(Dunatorzó, Dunaszaurusz), more recenly, however, he has been shooting in
the eastern limits of the country: he has just completed the sequel to his
prize-winning Mostohák (Foster-Care). Because once again Csillag is standing
his ground. He hasn't let the subject slip, but after two years has returned
to the scene. In his experience no changes occured, the same people are in
charge of child welfare with the same mentality. A megye árvái (The Orphans
of the County) is full of the tragedies of children placed with foster-parents,
in homes, with their real parents, sent to detention centres, adopted abroad,
children leaving or thrown out of state care, and the grown-ups who are responsible
for their fates. The tension - and the film - only loosens up when the politicians
start speaking in the county hall or at a meeting of the foster parents' association.
Their overworked platitudes and non-binding promises are light years away
from the problems that torture families and are crying out for remedies. To
realise this we have to make the sacrifice of tearing ourselves away from
Gábor Balog's pictures for a few moments, from the faces of the serenely smiling
little ones and the bigger children anxious about their futures who already
know that over their parents there stands a bigger power which they are all
at the mercy of.
To film reality you need just as long a period of preparation
and even more time for shooting than for a feature film. You can't make a
documentary out of a one or two week trip. Or can you? I had my doubts as
I sat down to watch Gábor Ferenczi's Magyar bulletin (Hungarian Bulletin)
which he admits to having made during two lightning visits to the Székelyföld
region in Romania. What's more it's on a terribly sensitve, hysterically politicised
subject - the Hungarian identity card that can be applied for on the basis of
the so-called Status Law which aims to support Hungarian minorities beyond
the country's borders. He didn't want to treat the subject in depth or even
up and down the country, he just took some shots which didn't need any special
organisation or extensive system of contacts. He purposely chose places where
(one would think) there would be no question as to who was Hungarian. Everyone.
And the Romanians living with them and among them would easily pass through
the sieve, after all they speak Hungarian like one of us. But to possess the
identity card they need more convincing proof. You have to prove you belong
to a church or are a member of the organisation, and this includes payment
of the annual fee or parochial tax. Apart from that, Gypsies have to certify
with bills how they spent the allowance given to children who attend Hungarian
schools. A man born into the Orthodox faith, who has abandoned both his faith
and his ethnicity and who, together with his (Hungarian) child, has been deserted
by his (Hungarian) wife, is in a fix. He'd like to convert to Calvinism, but
the minister first wants to be convinced of his sincerity and of what he really
believers and of his knowledge of the Heildelberg catechism. Young wives seem
to be on the run in this part of the world because another (Hungarian) man
isn't interested in the identity card because he's down in the dumps having
also been abandoned. There are some who have applied for it because they'd
like to benefit from the advantages it brings, and some who don't want to
use it for anything, they are content with its symbolic value. There are some
who would apply for it but they can't produce the annual membership fee for
the certification. A shepherd stands on the Hargita mountains with his wife
and two children. He watches over the sheep from spring till autumn, night
and day, they sleep next to them in a shed. He doesn't really know what the
whole thing is about and wouldn't have time to arrange things anyway. In the
lovely Farkaslaka (Lupeni) - a pure Hungarian village - everything is organised.
The town crier shouts out that people can now go and get their photos taken
(in that remote little place even an official photo can be a problem), and
they have found someone who will bring the documents for the whole village
from Budapest. But this is by no means plain sailing: if you haven't got a
relative in Budapest you are forced to spend the night in the doorway of the
office because only someone who is there at opening time can hope to be given
a number for the queue. Hungarian Bulletin makes something ob-vious we already
suspected: it's not easy to be Hungarian. The good thing about Ferenczi's
film is that there is no politics or ideology in it, just people. Who have
an even tougher life than we do, who make greater efforts and experience at
a deeper level the fact of where and to whom they are born. But they have
no intention of regarding their homeland as a reservation where, in exchange
for the defence and support drawn from the mother country, they will preserve
their archaic way of life on behalf of us too. In Farkaslaka for a moment
we catch sight of the internet café, favourite meeting-place of the local
young, diagonally opposite the church and the writer's Áron Tamási's grave.
...
Erzsébet Bori
is the regular film critic of this journal.
