December 15, 2008

National Gallery Presents Films By Hungarian Director Péter Forgács

The National Gallery of Art Film Program presented 3 films of Hungarian director and avant-garde artist Péter Forgács on Sunday, December 7 and on Saturday, December 13 in the East Building Concourse Auditorium. While the themes of Péter Forgács are not easy — family stories, war, philosophy, vanishing times and places — the films themselves were magical, constructing ephemeral spaces from amateur footage and forgotten texts. Péter Forgács introduced his films in a lecture titled 'Film, Memory, and Amnesia' on December 7 at 2:00pm at the National Gallery of Art.

 

Péter Forgács in front of the Hungarian Reformed Federation of America's Kossuth House in Washington, DC

Miss Universe of 1929 is the delicate story of cousins Lisl Goldarbeiter and Marci Tänzer, both born in 1907 to a large middle-class Austro-Hungarian Jewish family, is retold largely through Marci's home movies of his beloved Lisl, whose rise to beauty pageant stardom culminated in her crowning as the first Miss Universe. (December 7, 3:30, dir: Péter Forgács, 2006, digital beta, German with subtitles, 70 minutes)

 

Miss Universe 1929 is the delicate story of Lisl Goldarbeiter, born in 1907

 

Own Death is poetically detailing the sensation of a near fatal heart attack. It is Forgács' first foray into fiction, based on Hungarian writer Péter Nádas' biographical novella. A seemingly objective meditation on life is rendered subjective through Nádas' first-person voiceover and Forgács' use of rich evocative imagery. (December 7, 5:00, dir: Péter Forgács, 2007, digital beta, 118 minutes)

 

 

Own Death is poetically detailing the sensation of a near fatal heart attack

 

I am Von Höfler is about Tibor Höfler, last living member of the Hungarian leather manufacturing dynasty from Pécs, retells his family's history through narrative, letters, photographs, and home movies. As personal stories unfold against pivotal moments in central European history, Tibor's fate intertwines with that of Goethe's young Werther, a character modeled on his own eighteenth-century ancestor, Jakob von Höfler. (December 13, 2:00pm, dir: Péter Forgács, 2008, digital beta, Hungarian with subtitles, 160 minutes)

 

 

I am Von Höfler is an intertwining family history of Tibor Höfler, last living member of the Hungarian leather manufacturing dynasty from Pécs, and that of Goethe's young Werther, a character modeled on Tibor's own eighteenth-century ancestor, Jakob von Höfler