Focus on Eastern European cinema: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic

POLAND

Poland, fully recovered from the hiatus caused by Krysztof Kieslowski's death in 1996, now produces 30 films a year, half of these for television. Kerzy Hoffman's With Fire and Sword, a rather costly historical epic, drew 7.135 million to the home box office in 1999 and continued to roll along to 7.3 million attendees as of April 2000. Andrzej Wajda's Pan Tadeusz, an even costlier spectacle co-produced by Heritage Films with Canal + Entertainment, drew a cool million visitors during the first week in release and has now passed to 6.2 million and was sold to 21 countries.

With Fire and Sword, based on the first part of novelist Henryk Sienwicz poplar war trilogy, completes the Sienkiewicz Hoffman cycle which began three decades ago with Pan Wolodyjowsky in 1968 and continued with The Deluge in 1964. Together, they form a kind of national film monument. All Poles are familiar with the name Sienkiewics, not least because he penned the international bestseller Quo Vadis? at the end of the 19th century.

When Andrzej Wajda was asked why he wanted to film Pan Tadeusz, a monumental 12-canto epic poem, he answered bluntly "this speaks to the soul of every Pole -- any schoolchild can recite from memory some lines from Adam Mickiewcz's romantic hymn to the human spirit, penned in exile from Paris in 1834. At the 24th Gdynia Festival of Polish Feature Films held annually in October, Pan Tadeusz was presented out-of-competition and Jerzy Hoffman's With Fire and Sword was honored with a Special Jury Prize. Another Special Jury Prize was given to Kerzy Stuhr's A Week in the Life of a Man, fresh from its world premiere a Venice.

Most important of all for national production, the Polish parliament is considering a tax law on the sale of movie tickets that will benefit filmmakers via a subsidy plan to encourage quality over quantity.

Top 5 Polish Productions
1. With Fire and Sword (Jerzy Hoffman) 7.145 million admissions
2. Pan Tadeusz (Adrzej Wajda) 5.5 million admissions
3. Two Killers (Juliusz Machulski) 1.189 million admissions
4. Operation "Samum" (Wladyslaw Pasikowski) 311,000 admissions
5. Lucky Strike (Marciej Dutkiewicz) 286,000 admissions

HUNGARY

Hungary's hopes for a cinematic revival rest on two pillars. Movie buffs and festival directors prefer acknowledged stylists with a deep commitment to film art, but the home audience lines up for family dramas that reflect the present or are anchored in the nostalgic past. Istvan Szabos's A Taste of Sunshine, an epic production starring Ralph Fiennes, shot in Budapest with an English-speaking cast, was billed not only as a Jewish family saga, but also as an epic that chronicles the social and political upheaval of the 20th century. And Bara Kabay and Katalin Petenyi's Hippolyt, the current box office hit in Hungary, is a remake of Osvan Szekely's Hippolyt the Butler (1931), a comedy about a butler teaching social manners to a parvenu family.

Arguably the most promising development on the Hungarian film scene is the explosion of multiplexes in Budapest and other urban centres, located in new shopping malls and entertainment centres, despite the fact that smaller theatre owners now find themselves with their backs to the wall. Last November, for instance, the South African Stern Century opened a 14-screen multiplex in Budapest's western city centre, and another with 12 screens in the Campona shopping centre.

The most popular Hungarian hit of 1999 was Tamas Sas's Pirates, primarily because of local band, Jazz + AZ, flooding the soundtrack. Other draws were Peter Tamara's 6:3 about the "soccer match of the century" between Hungary and England in 1953; and the aforementioned Hippolyt. The latter augues well for more screen adaptations of Hungarian classics.

Hungarian filmmakers, however, are still waiting for the passage of supportive new film laws that would eventually revitalize the entire Hungarian film industry. Unfortunately, the presence of a conservative coalition in parliament has sidetracked its implementation. Without a more liberal government funding policy, the handwriting is on the wall: creative stagnation and more directors departing for Germay and the United States, for teaching jobs in university film departments.

Top Hungarian Productions
1. Pirates (Tamas Sas) 183, 525 admission
2. Hippolyt (Barna Kabay, Katalin Petenyi) 132, 319 admissions
3. 6:3 (Peter Timar) 113,515 admissions
4. Europa Express (Saba Horvath) 57, 084 admissions
5. The Lord's Lantern in Budapest (Miklos Jancso) 33,416 admissions

CZECH REPUBLIC

New Czech Cinema is flourishing and comparisons are being made with the Prague Spring films of the 1960s. By general consensus, the films that confirm the diversity of this new wave are Jan Sveraks' Kolya, Zelenka's Buttoners (Rotterdam Festival Award), and Sasha Gedeon's Return of the Idiot (Venice entry), the latter inspired by the Dostoyevsy classic. Generally speaking, these directors are successful because their films deal with problems facing the younger generation. Moreover, they are generously supported by the Karlovy Vary Festival, a key international event and meeting-place for Central and Eastern European directors.

It was at Karlovy Vary that Jan Hrebejk's Cozy Dens was launched. A family drama set on the event of the 1968 Soviet Invasion. The index of success here is the Golden Kingfisher, awarded by an independent jury annually in April at the Pilsen Festival. Selenka won it in 1998 for Mnaga -- Happy End and 1999 for Buttoners, Hrebejk won this year for Divided We Fall.

Scripted by Petr Jarchovsky, the same talented screenwriter who penned the remarkable Cozy Dens last year, Divided We Fall is another closed-circle family saga that features veteran stage-and-screen actors in a comedie humane. The story shifts neatly from light bucolic scenes to painfully tragic confrontation by virtue of its historical setting - rural Czech town during the last year of the German occupation. Divided We Fall, as the title hints, spoofs all and sundry within an entirely credibly context: Czech collaborators, Nazi officers, a Jew in hiding, Russian liberators, jealous neighbors, the heroes and cowards of small-town provincialism.

A new government in neighboring Slovakia bodes well for veteran filmmakers Martin Sulik, Dusan Hanak and Vladimir Balco, who up to now have had to rely on the largesse of Czech Television. Sulik's road-movie Orbis Pitus and Balco's political satire Rivers of Babylon were both launched at Karlovy Vary, while Hanak's forthcoming Intolerance boasted Prague producers.

Top 5 Czech productions:
1. Cozy Dens (Jan Hrebejk) 989, 529 admission
2. Close Thing (Zdenek Troska) 353,060 admissions
3. Return of the Idiot (Sasha Gedeon) 243,725 admissions
4. All My Loved Ones (Matej Minac) 102,666 admissions
5. Once There Was a Cop III (Jaroslav Soukop) 112,049 admissions

Ron Holloway