The Witness
The Witness - in Hungarian with English subtitles
Schedule
Directed by: Peter Backo
Actors: Ferenc Kállai, Lajos Őze
It is not recommended for children under 12 years.***
The witness has become a symbol of the socialist dictatorship in recent decades. It was produced for ten years in a box and was first screened at Cannes in 1981, then shown in Canada and another thirty-two countries.
Shooting – series stops, scenes cut out, and additions – was a typical combination of power and art in the late 1960s. The original version is five minutes longer than the version introduced in ’81 and finally released. There is a dark shutdown scene referring to László Rajk, and a broader conversation where the thousand-year stability of the Church is confronted with the communist system just born. This version did not yet include the electric scene that ended the distributed version, which took place several years later, which the director adjusted to the end of the film on the orders of the censorship in 1969.
Based on the remaining one uncensored copy, using digital technology, it is now possible to reconstruct the original version. The cut-out pieces, many of which originally came from Mafilm’s warehouse, were fully inserted into the film by the Filmlabor and “lighted” into the restored material of the well-known version.
“The witness is as if Kafka, Orwell, Pinter, and Hašek (Svejk, a good soldier) were joined together... As the nightmare of the bureaucracy, mixed with the motives of the Big Brother, manifests itself from the state executive machine to the unskilled Pelican Joseph, it is not humorous, but evil, incomprehensibly ambiguous.” (Alex Keneas, Newsday Garden City, July 14, 1984)
(port.hu)
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Time of execution:
Thursday 16 November 18:00
Price of ticket: 1,900 Ft
Tickets are not available, reservations are made in order of arrival. Open the door approximately 5 minutes before projection.
Tickets are available:
1) On site every day from 17:00-21:00
2) The ticket order:
https://form.jotform.com/233073977617365
Please pick up your tickets at the latest 30 minutes before booking.
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The film was produced by the National Film Institute Thanksgiving Nonprofit Zrt.
Bem Cinema
In January 2016, the 108-year-old Bem Cinema will reopen its doors to the public, in a new way never seen before in Hungary: as a cinema of cult and classic films (no harm!), or as the educated French say (if you know your English): as a "repertory cinema".
