Silent films until 1930

In the first 30 years of film history, film reels turned in cinemas without sound. Across the world, this was a period of extreme dynamism and productivity, yet very little has survived from this first golden age. One can pin the blame for some of the destruction on the increasing interest in ‘talkies’ and a lack of film archives. In Hungary, around 600 feature films were produced in these...

Sound film era: 1931-1944

The second golden age of filmmaking was the interwar period, when film production was nowhere near as homogenous as film historians often suggest. Artistic periods followed one after the other, each faithfully reflecting the given historical transformations. In the wake of comedy hits typical of the early years, the genre of melodrama appeared almost simultaneously with the outbreak of war,...

State-owned film production: 1945-1988

Hungarian filmmaking became internationally acknowledged in the decades after World War II. During the period culminating in the collapse of socialism, artists of the old guard (Viktor Gertler, Frigyes Bán, Márton Keleti) worked in parallel with the new (Zoltán Fábri, Károly Makk, Miklós Jancsó, István Szabó), who not only brought a breath of fresh air but enriched Hungarian filmmaking with...

After the fall of socialism

The dropping of artistic traditions inherited from the age of socialism resulted in the same sort of fascinating and unique renewal of film language for Hungarian films as in other countries of Europe that shared our history. This is apparent in the diversity and soaring creativity of the ever-increasing number of works made over the years, bringing more recently new Oscars and widespread...