Zsóka Nestler

Peter Nestler portrays the everyday life of two young music students from Budapest who are trying to balance their family life, which is shaped by Roma traditions, with their academic education at music school. Brigitta, 12, and Tünde Máko, 10, live with their parents and two older sisters in Budapest's 6th district, the city's former Jewish quarter. Music is very important in this family, and both girls have been playing the violin since the age of five, just like their father and grandfather. Their grandfather discovered the girls' talent, and since then Brigitta and Tünde Máko have been attending a music school where they also receive private lessons.

Nestler highlights visits by several German entrepreneurs to oil facilities. In the 1970s, Peter and his wife, Zsóka Nestler, collaborated on a series of educational films for television that focused on craft-making. These “biographies of objects” are rigorous investigations into the history of working techniques, production processes, and materials.

With the help of drawings, Nestler provides a historical overview of the types of work associated with industries that are crucial to Scandinavia, particularly those related to ore mining.

Nestler relates the histories of shipbuilding, armaments, and war in Europe to the exploitation of labor and the circulation of knowledge and capital between countries.

Peter and Zsóka Nestler collaborated on this film, an exploration of the working techniques involved in the process of glass-making.

Roma and Sinti people talk about their experiences in the Third Reich and the Federal Republic of Germany, inspired by Otto Pankok’s paintings of Romani theme and subject in the 1930s, declared degenerate art by the Nazis. These are moving narratives of persecution, discrimination, marginalisation, of life as second-class human beings, all of which lasts, incredibly enough, right up to the allegedly democratic present day of the film, since they live in inhumane conditions in barracks at the margins of cities and society and are not officially recognised as Nazi victims. Long, nearly uncut sequences open space for the people and their stories. That’s all it takes for one of Peter and Zsóka Nestler’s most important works.

In the 1970's Peter and Zsóka Nestler made several educational documentaries on industrial production for Swedish public television. The three-part Berghantering/Järnhantering [Mining/Ironworks] (1974-1975) explores the historical roots and contemporary material conditions of mining and iron production in Sweden and elsewhere.

A reflection on the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet captured in its economic and social causalities. Originally shot for a TV youth program but canceled before broadcast.