FIPRESCI at the Classic Film Marathon 2024

Budapest Classic Film Marathon: From Morning till Midnight.

In 2024, for the first time, the FIPRESCI annual general assembly took place in the Hungarian capital within the framework of the Budapest Classic Film Marathon. Despite the threat of the flood, the city boasted a perfect summer vibe to complement a festival that generously hosted this film critics’ gathering. It was hard to imagine a better place to discuss the federation’s affairs, as the very core of this still young yet impressive festival (in both scale and essence), breathing with lavish cinematic joy that skilfully transfers its guests to the realm of the magic of cinema. Open-air screenings in the heart of the city, live music playing in the historical cinema hall, and legends of the filmmaking industry: all this and more can be found at the Film Marathon.

FIPRESCI vice president Elena Rubashevska talked to György Ráduly, the director of the Film Archive of the Hungarian National Film Institute and the father of the Budapest Classic Film Marathon. In this conversation, they covered the history of the festival and the values behind it, audience design, cinema as an educational and parenting tool, modern times challenges in the audiovisual industry, and guilty pleasure films.

György Ráduly worked in France for thirteen years as a cinema distributor and documentary producer. He co-organized film festivals that focused on Central European film heritage, as well as programmed a lot of retrospectives with the La Cinémathèque française and arthouse movie theatres. In 2016, he was asked by the Hungarian National Film Institute to develop a project about the modernization of the film archive and promotion of the national film heritage. A long time before, he was already familiar with everything that was happening in Western Europe in terms of the preservation of film heritage and attended the thematical events such as Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Lumiere Film Festival in Lyon, and Cannes Classics. At the time, in Hungary, any classic content completely disappeared from cinemas or TV channels. György understood that a strong impact was needed to bring it back, which was a difficult task in an environment ruined by the hegemony of Hollywood pictures, cheap audiovisual materials, and online platforms. Something powerful was required to communicate such ideas, and he figured that the main thing would be to make Budapest a meeting point and bring international experts to Hungary. There was no such festival before in Central Europe! As the film archive itself didn’t have a proper cinema, György had to deal with the arthouse cinema owners. Nobody believed in what he was doing: “Old films will not interest anyone! It is impossible to bring an audience for such a thing!”

György Ráduly: “With my experience from France, I knew it was hard but not impossible. For the first edition, I was negotiating two small screening rooms in Corvin Film Palace, and only for the weekend. I was a little bit upset at the time; I felt a lack of encouragement. Yet the name of the festival came from this negotiation. I thought: if I only have two and a half days for this festival, then it will be a marathon! I will organize screenings from morning till midnight, and I will shout through media to people to come over with their tents and set them in front of the cinema. During that weekend, we scored 5,000 admissions, and it convinced cinema owners that next year we can have the whole cinema for a week”.

The first institution supportive of the initiative was the French Institute. The next year, Urania Cinema (the historical film hall on the roof of which the first Hungarian film was shot) and Toldi Cinema stepped in for the major event. Then there was an ambitious idea of creating little Bologna with Piazza Maggiore in Budapest, and arrange open-air screenings. The second year was already conducted with a very visible impact that gathered thousands of people and film legends such as Claudia Cardinale, Jean-Marc Barr, and Katinka Farago.

Answering the question of how he managed to resist all doubts, György Ráduly stated: “I was convinced we can only win if we believe in victory. If we had believed in failure, it would be impossible to win”.

In a similar manner, Ráduly seemed amused by the comment that he comes across as a person with excellent communication skills: “I’m not aware of any special communication skills of mine. The only thing that I have is a strong belief and a commitment, and when you have that, nobody can stop you. For thirteen years, I was fighting for the ‘lost cause’, a distribution of Hungarian films in France. That was a challenge! Every day, I had to persuade French people it was important to see those movies because it’s a part of our European cultural heritage. We are a big family called Europe, and if they didn’t know us, how could we live together? The cinema is a perfect tool to learn about each other. I didn’t want to sell the product, I wanted to fulfil the mission. It was always visible and heard, and that’s all, it’s not more than that”.

Budapest Classic Film Marathon boasts an impressive attendance, which is visible to the naked eye. To describe the festival’s work on attracting viewers, Ráduly uses the expression “audience design”. As the festival deals with old films, it becomes a transmitter of cultural identity. In that capacity, it can teach history through films, but even more, it can teach human relations.

György Ráduly: “Take Bela Tarr’s first film, Family Nest (1979): it describes the problem of living together in the communist era in these blocks. People were forced to live together by the system. We observe how prefabricated ‘ideal’ marriages functioned, revealing the common understanding of each other. That’s also how we learn about our past! It’s a very precise view on the failure of human relations, a historical testimony. At the same time, this problem stays with us today, and the old masterpieces can help us sensibilize ourselves for the social message of the film and initiate the talk”.

The festival pursues the goal of integrating cinema into the general culture on the same level as literature and music and makes an effort to raise a generation that will know Hungarian and universal cinema. They established a connection with schools in Hungary and gave them free access to hundreds of Hungarian feature films, and for 600 films exercises for different disciplines: history, literature, art, and even ethics. The website is available for all schools that don’t have cinemas in the neighbourhoods; for others, it’s been negotiated with the Ministry of Education that teachers can get permission to take kids from schools to screenings. The only problem is that there are very few cinemas left in Hungary. Back in the 1990s there were 3000 cinemas; but the economic situation of the ‘90’s and the privatisations made have ensured that today it is only 300 screens.

Another serious problem for the festival to address is the shortened attention span of the new generation. With the huge quantity of audiovisual content coming from everywhere, students are losing their focus, and it results in difficulties in learning and memorizing. György has two ten-year-old kids, and cinema plays an important role in his parenting strategy.

György Ráduly: “The parents’ problem is that we don’t have time anymore, and we are disturbed by surviving needs. There is information all around you that makes you nervous: wars, instability, migration, antimigration, economy… The average person is very tired by the time they get home. And it should be the time you devote to your kids, also selecting films or books that can give them a sense of peace and security. This is a very reach experience, to watch a black and white movie together with your child. I played Casablanca (Dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942) recently for my kids. At first, I thought they might be too young for such a film, but no! They were totally able to grasp it. But they would have never watched such a film if I were not there. We were just sitting together, and they were in the movie, asking questions: What does it mean, fascist or nazi? Why all these people are in Casablanca? Why are they doing what they doing? They were constructing the whole story. But as a parent you need to be there, present, and discuss the film afterwards. This is the thing that we start to lose, and it’s a problem of the parents and teachers”.

While asked about his own first cinema memory, György gave an unexpected answer: the Russian iconic animation series Well, Just You Wait! (Ну погоди!)…

György Ráduly: “I was growing back in communist Hungary, and we had only two channels – well, one and a half because there was one that was broadcasting on the weekends all day long and another one at night, so TV was limited mostly to the news or war hero movies. Very few times, on Saturday night, we had the chance to see some carefully selected, ‘politically correct’ American movies. Animation had to be discovered in the cinema. So, I can recall that wolf and the rabbit [lead characters of Well, Just You Wait!] as my first cinema memory!”

In 2024, the Budapest Classic Film Marathon paid tribute to Hungarian animation. With the broad possibilities of topics, developing the concept for the new edition is the best and the worst part of the programming team’s work. There are some objective elements like anniversaries and other actualities that they integrate into the program, and there are subjective ones, “un coup de cœur”, as Ráduly calls it, meaning a passion for something.

György Ráduly: “I love the period when there was a real connection between central Europe and Hollywood; Budapest, Vienna, Berlin – a Hollywood connection. These wonderful people who had to leave, for one reason or another, to America, built this dream factory from scratch – Billy Wilder, Michael Curtiz, Alexandr Korda and many others. They brought European culture with them, and that’s why early Hollywood was so much European, there was European humor and drama inside. Those people were creating a wonderland. This is my special pleasure, to rewatch and present these films”.

To the question about preferences in modern cinema, the Classic Marathon director replied with no doubts: “I watch old films! I don’t have time for movies that don’t have the dimension of cinema. Unfortunately, it’s less and less the case in modern films”.

In our talk, we couldn’t miss discussing the role of film critics in the present-day film landscape.

György Ráduly: “Film critics are in a difficult situation. People simply don’t read as much as thirty or forty years ago. When even twenty years ago there was a long article in Les Cahiers du cinema, there was a core audience that was reading it carefully and with attention. These kinds of media are losing its audience year by year; as we discussed, the younger generation cannot focus anymore. I think that critics have to find their place in this reducing space of the cinematic media. And sometimes, to get the attention of the audience, you need to speak about something else than cinema – sometimes even politics. The situation is not easy, yet you have to keep your track. I myself was learning how to watch films with critics’ help, and you can play a very important role for a new generation. Keep your commitment and values!”

Elena Rubashevska
Edited by Steven Yates
© FIPRESCI 2024