Little But Tough

Józsi drives a taxi all day long. He often telephones Éva, who, on the other hand, stays home all day long, having nothing else to do but to be beautiful and wait for Józsi.

In the week of the book an interview is made with the writer Péter Simon, whose first book of short stories appeared in the prime of his life.

Croatian anarchists collaborate with Hungarians to make a bid for the life of King Alexander of Yugoslavia.

After serving a prison sentence for a street fight, Csaba returns home to find his wife, Éva, now living with another man, Miklós. With nowhere else to go, Csaba is forced to share their small apartment, leading to constant friction and escalating provocations.

1894. The mortal remains of Lajos Kossuth are brought home from abroad, the railways are lined with people with their hats in hand, and among them stands the teenager Imre Tányér. 1910. The grown-up Imre undertakes the task to solve the question unsolved since 1848-49, i.e. the transformation of peasant life. He fights for the rights of his class, for justice, for human dignity in a society distorted, backward and built on inequality.

The sad tale of a proletarian malcontent ensconced in a monstrously depressing housing project who—even less effectually than the heroes of Bald-Dog Rock—attempts to change his life. Purchasing a power drill and slinging it across his shoulder like the anti-hero of a spaghetti western, he turns entrepreneur, boring holes in his neighbors’ walls so that they can hang mirrors or pictures.

The subject of a Roma settlement gains an almost metaphysical dimension as we watch a long, slow shot of a silent 18-year-old Roma mother.

When middle-aged Kata realises that her life will only be complete if she has a baby of her own, her longstanding-but-married boyfriend Joska refuses to comply. But by developing an unlikely friendship with the angst-ridden teenage orphan Anna, who is also involved in a controversial relationship, Kata discovers aspects of herself, and her role as a woman, that have gone unexamined throughout her entire, lonely life.

It is 1989, the year of the demise of socialism in eastern Europe. Nevertheless, the one theme of Junk Movie does not refer to this historical moment of high ideals, quite the contrary, the wild, burlesque of a motif-mozaic seems merely to stick it’s tongue out at the arrogant players of politics who have their heads stuck in the clouds. The film rudely points out the mystery and unapproachability surrounding the every-day existence of politics. The scene is a greasy, falling-down block of a pub called the Gólya and its immediate surroundings.

In the Kerepesi Street cemetery, three grave diggers contemplate the fate of the world, then they step out of this role and in a sequence of episodes they play the typical figures of contemporary Hungarian reality, the fat cat, the swashbuckler, the victim, underworld chieftains, and present little absurd dramas of love, marriage, friendship, public order and legal safety. The author and the film director walk among them all the time, contemplating, laughing at their plays. The stories starting from the graveyard and returning there warn of the inevitability of death. The author and the director (Gyula Hernádi and Miklós Jancsó) wisely make friends with death.

Some of the most symbolic moments of the 1956 Revolution in Hungary were the tooth-and-nail battles fought by the so-called 'Pest Lads' who dared to defy odds by taking on the panzers of one of the world's superpowers. The story begins on October 23rd, 1956 and ends on November 4th of the same year. Juli is Totya's girlfriend but also loves Gábor. Their love triangle will have to endure the trials and tribulations of these stirring times. A group of boys living in the outskirts of the capital are playing football in abandoned lot when Juli, a ticket inspector, brings news of protests breaking out in the city. Only Gábor accompanies her into town and together they become part of this historical event. At dawn, when the boys too come under fire from Soviet forces, they decide to join in the fight.

1979. Gábor H. works in a law enforcement institution. He robs a bank branch, gets into jail. 1989. Gábor H. and the similarly unemployed Sanyi want to get money by robbing.

By the notes of Fiáth Pompeiusz, the one-time friend of Kapa and Pepe, Professor Szirtes has solved the secret of the time machine, and he realizes the invention relying on "special" H2O. Kapa and Pepe shall return by it into the past in order to set time right, which is out of joint, that is, to correct history, to save King Louis II, and prevent the Mohács Disaster. Pepe yields to the not too tender persuasion to enter upon the great journey through time, dies and revives, and they arrive at the battlefield of Mohács in time. Kapa films the events. The Turks win and cut off the king’s, Pepe’s, head, still the Hungarians dictate the peace treaty. Kapa and Pepe want to return, they fill the time machine up with water from the well, yet it won’t start. Even so Kapa and Pepe hover over Budapest and quarrel.

This time, Kapa and Pepe are first of all prisoners of war – and convicts taken to forced labor service, Jews, Hungarian soldiers, German soldiers. Once they are to be executed, then again they are to perform executions. The film tells in spectacular episodes about the fact that in the past more than one century and a half we kept marching from war to war; occupation and liberation turned out to be indifferent, and why couldn’t the Jews execute the SS-guys? Our heroes hover about dilapidated barracks, then again on the bridges of the capital they guess whose satellites or eternal friends for all times we might be just now. In the cupboard, among the preserved fruit bottles, Stalin is still hiding. The authors of the film are cited before court, then in a showcase hospital they are waiting for the end to come. A Soviet soldier-maid closes the film with a Péter Nádas-quote.

Allegory of the suppression of the 1919 revolution and the advent of fascism in Hungary; in the countryside, a unit of the revolutionary army spares the life of father Vargha, a fanatical priest. He comes back and leads massacres. A new force, represented by Feher, apparently avenges the people, but only to impose a different, more refined and effective kind of repression.