Erzsebét Bori

And Yet It Moves

Áron Gauder and Erik Novák's Nyócker and the Revival of Hungarian Animation

[...]

The District certainly doesn't suffer from any shortage of outspokenness and cheek, though its graphics are not the least crude or basic. The photographic precision and likeness to life of the faces and voicing of the characters, along with the exteriors and interiors of their homes were created at home on personal computers - something anyone can have a go at. The project cost no more than the equivalent of some $500,000; what is best and most original in it, the concept and the thinking, didn't cost a penny.
Áron Gauder had the idea of taking a series of digital photographs of the cast, the props and the locations and, having transferred them to drawings, animating them. The story is set in Józsefváros, the eighth district of Budapest (hence the Hungarian title Nyócker, from nyolcadik kerület). This central city quarter emerged in the 19th century when new immigrants came to the rapidly developing city, and was inhabited by workers, by the poor and by the dubious. Its bad reputation goes back many years and, until only recently, it was the centre for cheap streetwalkers.

The image of Józsefváros (Josephstadt - Joseph's City) - a construct of facts, actual conditions, prejudices and city legends - still has a hold on the popular imagination, best expressed by the laconic wording in Apartments Wanted small-ads: "8th district out of the question!" This is the ghetto, the jungle, Budapest's Gypsy row, the hotbed of crime, where you'd do best not to go out in broad daylight, let alone after dark. Where anything can happen, from mafia showdowns to shoot-outs, to bombs, to knives flying through the air. Of course, this image, which the popular press, movies and rap lyrics constantly reinforce, doesn't live up to the reality; all that is true in the image is that here flats are relatively cheap and the environment is traditionally more accommodating to newcomers.
For that reason many Roma, especially musicians, live here, and, more recently, an increasing number of Chinese and Middle Eastern immigrants have arrived. Józsefváros may be a bit dirtier, noisier and more run-down than other Budapest districts, but public security is no worse here than anywhere else.
But who cares about prosaic reality once you've got living full-blooded urban folk-poetry, a modern mythology deeply rooted in the collective consciousness (and subconscious), and a cavalcade of colourful figures, a modern mythology that offers itself to a foul-mouthed, true-to-life and politically very incorrect film made for the uncorrupted young?
In this ghettoized Romeo and Juliet story, Ricsi the Gypsy and the Hungarian Julika fall in love and, together with a gang of local kids, devise a plan to disarm their hate-filled parents. The kids - Roma, Jews, Chinese and 'Arabs' - put together their heads and hearts, craftiness and imagination; they travel back to the Stone Age in a time machine and create extensive oil fields beneath the "district" as a means to pacify the greedy adults of the future with worldly goods.
For a while everything works like clockwork, the fabulous wealth smoothes out the ethnic differences in no time, the children live the good life, Józsefváros becomes a factor in world politics. But where there's business and oil, sooner or later the big shots come on the scene and the struggle for control gets under way. The CIA and the KGB are involved, as are the Pope, Tony Blair and George W. Bush. So once again we can start worrying about the lovers' fate.
The refreshing novelty - an almost Copernican turn - about The District is that it never thinks about going up against the gross prejudices and stereotypes; on the contrary, it plays up to them. The Roma here are criminals (musicians at best), the police are corrupt and the priest is a paedophile. One of the prostitutes is a country Roma, the other is Ukrainian (with KGB connections). The local sex shop is run by gay East German Stasi agents, the Jew is a shrewd profiteer, the Arab disguises himself as a kebab-vendor but makes bombs in his basement, and in the end we discover why Osama bin Laden hasn't been found yet. On top of all this the politicians get their deserts, whether the local politicos or Tony Blair in his Darth Vader helmet or George W. Bush who, enthusiastically applauded by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Tyrolean lederhosen, once again mixes up Budapest with Bucharest.
The ghetto, the poor district, is known in every big city in the world, but in this film there are, of course, some cultural references which you have to be Hungarian to understand, better still from Budapest, and even better still from Józsefváros. Besides the actors, some of the creative team and some well-known musicians have lent their faces and/or voices to the characters. A fair number of them are Roma. People who know the district well will also enjoy the locations with which the film works miracles. It shows the district with the accuracy of a map (part aerial photo, part photo album) with its identifiable houses, squares, streets, turning it once and for all into a place of beauty, colour and adventure - a fairytale city, where even dog dirt is picturesque. The richness and variety of the rap soundtrack may come as a surprise to anyone, Hungarian or foreign. 

 

Erzsebét Bori
is the regular film critic of this journal.