Passing Fancy

Divided into two different halves separated by mood and subject matter, this is an uneven drama about the experience of one Hungarian Jew before and during the fascist takeover of Budapest. The hero Pali (Zoltan Bezeredi) arrives back in Budapest from the U.S. and meanders among the intellectual and social elite before he leaves for a brief stay in England. There he has an even briefer affair with a happy-go-lucky aspiring actress (Anna Kubik), and after a few other encounters with movie mavens, he heads back to Budapest -- quite inexplicably. The rest of the film deteriorates into a dark realm of hatred and violence.

Two arts students, András and Viktor who are writing their thesis on detective stories, make up a story and keep nagging the famous film-director, who just came back from Hollywood, until he undertakes the job. At night they work on the film, in which two youths kill a director returning from the US. In the morning the director is found dead - a knife in his back.

After her divorce leaves her feeling depressed and aimless, a disciplined forty-year-old woman named Teréz wanders through Budapest while grappling with a profound sense of isolation. She visits former lovers and estranged acquaintances in a desperate attempt to find a meaningful connection and reclaim the stability she has lost.

Ede (Dezso Garas) is in his sixties, and he is full of uncertainty about how he and his wife Kati (Mari Torocsik) will fare in the new post-communist regime in Hungary. At least before, he had some idea what he needed to do to get by, and even if he never made much money with his myriad schemes, they got by. Kati has got a real bug in her ear about their livelihood, and is hounding him to get into the spirit of the new system. This is troubling enough for the old gent, but when he runs into an old mistress (Kati Lazar) and discovers that he has a grown son he has never met or knew about, his life becomes even more confusing. His slimy ex big-shot brother-in-law (Istvan Avar) is a major player in the new entrepeneurial risk-taking, and he beseiges poor Ede with advice as well. In this topical comedy, all these worrisome things, and more, come to a head at a big family celebrtion.

Janos Flandera (Frigyes Funtek) is a student who is kept by an older woman in this depressing drama. When he applies to a prestigious school in Moscow, he is turned down because he is a gigolo. Not only is his scholarship request denied, he is sentenced to a year in prison at hard labor. Janos abandons the jealous older woman who helped deny his entrance to the school. Punished after defending a political prisoner, Janos takes solace in love affairs, but his union with the crippled daughter of a prominent political official puts his life in danger.

The film, paying a tribute to the memory of Endre Ságvári, a Communist hero, goes back to the summer of 1944. Through Colonel Gombos-Götz who has recognised that the Nazi-Germans will be ultimately defeated, Ságvári, the leader of the Young Communist Workers' Association asks Csiszár, the commander of the barracks in Andrássy street to provide him with guns to help release the Communist prisoners in Tata.

Dery is a grande dame actress of the Sarah Bernhardt school of big-gesture theater. Her beauty and popularity is fading, and a new school of acting which involves the use of one's own emotions (a-la Eleanora Duse) is emerging in the person of her younger Viennese rival. She thinks of retiring from the stage, and reunites briefly with her estranged husband in a newly-built manor in the country. Finding that life there is boring, she returns to town, the theater, and her old friends.

Consistent of only two long shots, three witches predict that Macbeth will ascend to the throne of Scotland. To fulfill this prophecy, Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to murder King Duncan, who has come to spend the night at their home. This crime plunges the new ruler into a macabre spiral that will lead him to sink into guilt and madness.

During the Rákóczi War of Independence, noblewoman Julianna Géczy becomes caught between warring factions as the city of Lőcse falls under siege.

Live concert at Madarasi Hargita

Kató Kelemen is asked by her father to go to his office and welcome an important business partner of his. When Mr. Andersen arrives he assumes Kató is a secretary and instructs her to deliver a letter. He's about to travel to Venice with his nephew who he has never met before. Since Kató falls in love with Andersen at first sight, she decides to dress like a boy and pretends to be the nephew.

A restless drifter from Istrati’s “Codin” crosses paths in Brăila with a fragile, enigmatic woman reminiscent of “Chira Chiralina“ in interwar Romania.