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A tanú (English subtitles)
Location
Main screening room
Date
February 12th, 2023
Duration
103 min
Cycle
Absurde de l'Est

Absurdity was a reality in the socialist republics of Eastern Europe until 1989. It was a response to the failures of the public services, to the pretenses, to the feeling of physical confinement. More than in Western Europe, the absurd in the East was a concrete and daily experience. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the former "People's Republics", we present works from Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, the former East Germany, the former Czechoslovakia. Most of the films are the first digital restorations. Guest programmer: Gabriel M. Paletz.

The Witness
Directed by
Péter Bacsó
Language
Hungarian with English subtitles
Actors
Ferenc Kallai, Daniel Zoltan, Lajos Oze, Lili Monori
Origins
Hungary
Year
1969
Duration
103 min
Genre
Comedy, Drama
Format
Digital
Synopsis

The bumbling protagonist of The Witness stumbles through a series of assignments at which he invariably fails, climaxing in the cultivation of the comically misnamed “Hungarian orange.” Yet at his court trial, he shows defiance against a regime defined by favoritism and betrayal. The film’s acerbic humor and principled criticism of the socialist system made it renowned in the Soviet bloc. The New York Times deemed it “as broadly entertaining as it is bold.” We present the recently restored version shown at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, fifty years after its original screening there won the Ecumenical Jury Prize. (Gabriel M. Paletz)

The Witness

Péter Bacsó

Péter Bacsó is a Hungarian screenwriter, playwright and director who graduated from the Budapest School of Drama and Film in 1950. He was a screenwriter for fifteen years and also taught at the same school for several years. He signed his first directing contract in 1963 with En été, c'est simple (Nyáron egyszerű). Paradoxically, the French public and critics discovered him in 1972 through two films with a social tone, screened in Paris: Breaking the Circle (Kitörés) and Present Time (Jelenidő), which evoke certain aspects of the working class condition in Hungary. No one, however, was yet familiar with The Witness (A tanu), blocked, upon its release in Budapest in 1969, for reasons of political expediency. When the film was released ten years later, it was a huge popular success in Hungary and was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981. In Hungarian cinema, Péter Bacsó is considered a master of comedy.