Category: films

ILONA GAAL (interviews, script) currently works as a journalist and editor at the Hungarian National Radio. After obtaining her degree in sociology and economy she published articles at Figyelő (economic weekly), at hvg.hu (online economic portal), and Magyar Narancs (political and current affairs weekly). She worked as the deputy editor in chief at “manager magazin” for 2 years. She wrote an investigative report about the story of the documentary “Synagogue for Sale” for “manager magazine”.

BORI KRIZA (interviews, script) obtained her MA in Sociology and Sociology of Minorities at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest, Hungary and also studied at the Nationalism Studies Program of the Central European University, Budapest. Currently as a beneficiary of the French Government Scholarship she is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris as well as at the Institute of Sociology, ELTE. She participated in numerous research projects; her main research interests include far right political parties and ideologies in Europe, national myths and identity, migration, minorities, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and collective memory. She has published extensively in Hungarian and English, her reports and articles appear regularly in the Hungarian press. Since 1999, as expert, researcher, interviewer, she has contributed to several award winning documentaries treating social issues (Being Decorated, The End of the Road, From Home to Home by Tamás Almási).

BALÁZS WIZNER (producer-composer) is the director of METAFORUM Media and Research Center. He graduated as a sociologist, got his Master’s degree in Nationalism Studies at CEU (Central European University, Budapest) and has been a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Sociology, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest since 1998. Apart from participating in several research projects and academic activities Balazs Wizner had been the script-writer and co-producer for a short film (Three walks, 2003) and the publisher of two books (A palacsinta hangja. – The Sound of Pancake. Collected Writings of Gypsy Children from a Ghetto-Village, 1999. A pilóta.– The pilot. Novel, 2000). His second novel will be published in fall 2005. He was the composer of a theater play and a short film, he plays the trumpet and writes music for his own jazz band.

LÁSZLÓ HARGITTAI (editor) is the founder and co-owner of 4Cut Digital Workshop. Since 1990 he had worked at the Hungarian National Television, at TV3, at Duna Television as an editor. He edited numerous award-winning feature and documentary films (amongst them are the films of Tamás Almási, Réka Pigniczky, András Salamon, Csaba Szekeres).

Privatization, Irish pub, mortgage, auction. Who would guess we’re talking about a synagogue in Kőszeg, a small town in Hungary?

The synagogue is in the center of town. Officially under landmark protection, it’s falling apart; the walls are rotting. The Cultural Heritage professionals throw up their hands and hope for the best. Meanwhile, the property owners wait for their investment to pay off. The Jewish community in a neighboring town joins the local government in setting up a foundation. A married couple rolls up their sleeves and attempts to save the building.

In presenting the fate of this 150-year old building, the documentary Synagogue for Sale shines a critical light on Hungary’s recent history.

Director’s Statement

Sometimes a building is more than just bricks and mortar.

When I was shooting my previous documentary – Once They Were Neighbours – about a small Hungarian town and its non-Jewish elderly people’s memory about the Holocaust, I stumbled upon the old building of the synagogue. It stands at the most frequented spot of the city – but behind a locked fence and weeds around it. The building’s status mirrors that of the local Jewish life: extinguished long time ago and no chance of revival. When I started to investigate the history and the present status of the synagogue, I found crazy stories: it is still under auction because a mortgage was placed on the building many years ago. Once it was almost turned into an Irish pub. Later the officials didn’t allow the owners to renovate so now there is water leaking through the roof, destroying the inner frescoes and wooden structures of the unique building. The synagogue has been “played around” with just like any other previously state owned properties that ended up being privatized after the change of the regime. It’s been subject of speculation and quarrel, hatred and stupidity. The people involved with it have their own reasons – noble or not so much.

After immersing into the story I realized that making a documentary about it can not only show some general human stories about enthusiasm and greed, narrow-mindedness and motivation, but at the same time it might help to save the building by shedding light to an absurd situation that needs to be remedied quickly.

Manager Magazin (monthy financial print magazine)

2006. September Ilona Gaal: Under Auction. Synagogue-business

Click the logo for the article (in Hungarian). TRANSLATION TO COME

Film.hu (professional film website)
2006. 12. 14. Balázs Dénes: Absurd situation? Make a film about it. Synagogue For Sale

Click the logo for the article (in Hungarian). TRANSLATION TO COME

Alpokalja-Online (news portal)
2006.12.23. Synagogue For Sale – Little absurd from Kőszeg

Click the logo for the article (in Hungarian). TRANSLATION TO COME

 Klubháló (cultural blogs)

2007. 02. 01. József Böjte’s blog about the Hungarian Film Week (excerpt)

“I would like to focus on a few valuable films and intriguing filmmakers, because they are worth noting. (The films will be re-screened in the Urania Theater next week, through Wednesday.)

Zsuzsanna Gellér-Varga’s film, “Synagogue For Sale,” is a documentary with a moral, the story of the plight of the abandoned synagogue in Kőszeg. Due to several changes in ownership, the Jewish religious community’s incompetence, the state and local governments’ passivity, and the preservationists’ indifference, to this day there is still no one committed to saving the synagogue, whose condition will soon resemble Olaszliszka [a Hungarian village whose crumbling and disappearing synagogue and cemetary were recorded in a three-part documentary by famed Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó]. One of my friends recently remarked that the one thing in Hungary that you can count on is envy. This film depicts the difficult road traveled by a middle-aged couple, willing and able to restore a small part of the site in keeping with its heritage, but meet with hostility and envy at every turn.”

Film.hu (professional film website)

2007. 02. 02. Viktória Réka Kiss: The jury’s evaluation of the documentary films

“…The jury significantly praised these films: Hungarian Football (András Pires Muhi), They Live Their Lives (Zsigmond Dezső), Synagogue For Sale (Zsuzsanna Gellér-Varga) and The Cattle-Car (Zelki János) …”

Judapest.org
2007. 01. 31. “vadjutka” blog: Synagogue For Sale

“…A story about the white spots born by the changing of the regime, the shoving of responsibilities, impotence, Jews and non-Jews and about a soon disappearing monument.”

Élet és Irodalom (poltical and cultural weekly)
2007. 03. 02. Lóránt Stőhr: Returnees, Displaced Persons, Emigres
Reflections on the Documentaries Presented at the 38th Hungarian Film Festival

“In her film “Synagogue For Sale,” Zsuzsanna Gellér-Varga delves into the fate of the synagogue in the Hungarian town of Kőszeg. The ongoing saga surrounding the synagogue’s sale and the rocky road to its restoration shed light on the excruciating responsibility of preserving the Jewish community’s physical heritage and its past. The film’s tightly woven structure focuses on a sharp conflict between the couple who purchase the synagogue’s auxiliary buildings and wish to preserve the buildings in their historical context, and the uneasy alliance between the Jewish community and town administration who, late in the game, realize what’s at stake. If we were to read about this conflict as a brief newspaper item, the latter’s position would seem the reasonable one: yet this documentary shows us what’s between the lines, and its footage, filmed over the course of months, demonstrates the human integrity of the activist couple.”

Rabbi Seminary – Jewish University
Doctoral School 3rd year 2nd semester, 2008.

Ildikó Kárpáti: “Remains of the Days” “Synagogue for Sale” – a documentary film by Zsuzsanna Gellér-Varga

“The ruins of the Koszeg synagogue stands still in the heart of beautiful Koszeg as does the history of the Hungarian Jews in Hungarian history: it’s an unheard of, shameful, unprocessable but at the same time unavoidable, eery and a highly horrible thing. They stand apart and can’t deal with each other.”

Click here. for the full article. (In Hungarian)

• 38th Hungarian Film Week – Budapest, Hungary
  official selection – 2007. Jan. 31. Wed 14.45 and Febr. 1. Thu 15.15 (with English translation) in Mammut Cinema, Febr. 3. Sat 13.00 in Urania Cinema
• 4th Film.dok Hungarian – Romanian Documentary Film Festival – Miercurea Ciuc, Romania
  official selection – 2007. May 14-20.
• Aired on Duna TV (Hungarian public access channel) – 08/27/2007
• 4th Cinefest Miskolc – International Festival of Young Filmmakers – Miskolc, Hungary, 09/2007
  Duna Award
  
• 7th Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles – Los Angeles, CA, USA – 11/2007
• Aired on M2 (Hungarian public TV) – 01/23/2008
• 2008 Dialektus Film Festival – Budapest, Hungary – 03/2008
  official selection
• “Crossroads of Europe” International Days of Documentary Cinema – Lublin, Poland – 04/2008
  official selection
• 2008 Jewish Eye World Jewish Film Festival – Ashkelon, Israel – 10/2008
  official selection

BORI KRIZA obtained her MA in Sociology and Sociology of Minorities at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest, Hungary and also studied at the Nationalism Studies Program of the Central European University, Budapest. Currently as a beneficiary of the French Government Scholarship she is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris as well as at the Institute of Sociology, ELTE. She participated in numerous research projects; her main research interests include far right political parties and ideologies in Europe, national myths and identity, migration, minorities, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and collective memory. She has published extensively in Hungarian and English, her reports and articles appear regularly in the Hungarian press. Since 1999, as expert, researcher, interviewer, she has contributed to several award winning documentaries treating social issues (Being Decorated, The End of the Road, From Home to Home by Tamás Almási).

BALÁZS WIZNER is the director of METAFORUM Media and Research Center. He graduated as a sociologist, got his Master’s degree in Nationalism Studies at CEU (Central European University, Budapest) and has been a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Sociology, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest since 1998. Apart from participating in several research projects and academic activities Balazs Wizner had been the script-writer and co-producer for a short film (Three walks, 2003) and the publisher of two books (A palacsinta hangja – The Sound of Pancake. Collected Writings of Gypsy Children from a Ghetto-Village, 1999. A pilóta – The pilot. Novel, 2000). His second novel will be published in fall 2005. He was the composer of a theater play and a short film, he plays the trumpet and writes music for his own jazz band. He is currently producing three documentary films.

Ghetto, brick factory, train station, mass graves – this time the neighbours of the Hungarian Jews remember. What did the bystanders see and what do they believe they saw in their small town community during the last days of WWII? The documentary Once They Were Neighbours is about the present as much as it is about history: the shadows cast by the failure to face the past during the last 60 years.

Kőszeg is a picturesque small town surrounded by mountains on the Austrian border of Hungary. A 150 year-old synagogue stands in the heart of the city – abandoned, overgrown with weeds, the gates locked. An old man stops in front of the synagogue and says: “The Jews don’t restore it! Those Jews, they have so much money!” 60 years ago they were neighbours, but today – just like almost anywhere in the countryside – no Jews live here.

The former lager-guard and the man who lived right by the brick factory as a teenager, or the lady who brought food in the ghetto as a young girl have similar memories. They speak admiringly of their former neighbours’ business talent and say that the Germans were to blame for everything.

But were they really…? The film raises difficult questions regarding the actions of average non-Jewish Hungarians while their Jewish neighbours were sent to their death. The people of Kőszeg – along with the entire Hungarian society – have never really faced the past, never taken responsibility, never asked the questions: How did we let it happen? What could have been done?

Presentation of the film on Film.hu (in Hungarian)

Press – Translations by Katica Avvakumovits

JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE

Hungary: Restoration of the hauntingly beautiful, long-abandoned synagogue in Kőszeg has begun
2020. Oct. 23.

Filmvilág (monthly print magazine)

2014. October – György Báron: There Was Once… Hungarian documentaries about the Holocaust

Click the logo for the article in Hungarian (translation to come).

Broward Jewish Journal (Florida, USA)
2006. 10. 19. Phyllis Steinberg: Film depicts Hungarian Holocaust eyewitnesses
(about Fort Lauderdale Filmfestival)

Click the image for a larger view.

PILPUL – an alternative Jewish webzine by Marom Klub Egyesület

2006. 04. 30. Szarka Judit: Tactfulness and accuracy
Viewer’s thoughts about Zsuzsanna Varga’s documentary, Once They Were Neighbours

Click the logo for the article in Hungarian (translation to come).

Élet és Irodalom (a cultural weekly)
2006. 02. 17. Lóránt Stőhr: In Polyphony. About the documentaries of the 37th Hungarian Film Week

“In the documentary Once They Were Neighbours, director Zsuzsanna Varga has taken a new approach toward the Holocaust. Instead of focusing on victims and survivors, Varga is curious about the eyewitnesses: what was the experience of the bystanders, of those who were neighbors of the deported Jews? The citizens of Kőszeg participating in the interviews are surprisingly willing to share their memories, yet clearly distance themselves from any personal, emotional connection. In some cases, this distancing may be the only way they can finally confess to the reporters the terrible burden they have carried for more than 50 years. Once They Were Neighbours, however, deals not only with the past; it also draws attention to the persistent, present-day denial of Hungarian society’s responsibility for the Holocaust. In the film, declarations blaming the Germans for the crimes serve to spotlight current attitudes: enduring anti-Semitism lends an edge to every word and gesture concerning the Jews. The reminiscences, the troubling question of “What would I have done in their place?”, and dramatic denials are juxtaposed with present-day attitudes toward the Holocaust, and the mixture results in some bizarre and affecting moments. The debate at a local patriotic men’s club over whether a gas chamber ever existed; the small-mindedness surrounding the construction of the Holocaust memorial; the obsessiveness of the man bent upon excavating the mass graves: these scenes all serve to underscore the fact that this community’s experience of dealing with the past remains contradictory and incomplete.”

Click the image to read article (in Hungarian).

Film.hu (Hungarian film industry website)
2006. 01. 30. András Surányi: Group Therapy – analysis

“Zsuzsanna Varga: Once They Were Neighbours – A brave and very sensitive film, in which the filmmaker is able to depict the everyday nature of horror, in which horror’s totality builds up from the seemingly weightless gestures of our small betrayals and our tiny helplessnesses.”

Click the logo for the full article (in Hungarian).

Filmkultúra (Hungarian website – film related news, interviews, critiques)
2006. 02. 01. Lóránt Stőhr: Keeping Their Distance. Interview with director Zsuzsanna Varga

Click here for the translation.

Click the logo for the full article (in Hungarian).

Magyar Narancs (Hungarian print weekly) 
2005. 05. 05. Erzsébet Bori: On the Sidelines. Review of the documentary

Click the article for full size (in Hungarian) or the logo for the online version.

Click here for the translation.

Magyar Narancs (Hungarian print weekly) 
2005. 05. 19. On the Sidelines – A commentary in response to “On the sidelines,” a review of Zsuzsanna Varga’s film “Once They Were Neighbours,” by Erzsebet Bori [borie], published on 2005. 05. 05. in Magyar Narancs. By Júlia Vajda

Click the article for full size (in Hungarian).

Click here for the translation.

Nők Lapja Évszakok (Hungarian monthly magazine)
2005. June

Marcsi Fodor: Such a Life … Like in the Movies. Professional portrait of Zsuzsanna Varga

Click the article for full size (in Hungarian).

Click here for the translation.

Film.hu (Hungarian film industry website)
2005. 05. 23. Emese Szlanárs: At the Last Minute – Interview with Zsuzsanna Varga

Click the logo for the full article (in Hungarian).

Click here for the translation.

Klubrádió (Hungarian commercial radio channel)
2005. 07. 30. Zsuzsa Kun and Kristóf Németh: Klubdélelott (Cultural Talk Show) – Interview with Zsuzsanna Varga
(translation to come)

37th Hungarian Film Week – Budapest, Hungary
official selection – 2006. January 31. – February 7.

Big Sky Documentary Film Festival – Missoula, Montana (USA)
official selection – 2006. February 16 – 22.

3rd Film.dok Hungarian – Romanian Documentary Film Festival – Miercurea Ciuc, Romania
official selection – 2006. May 22-28.

30th Atlanta Film Festival – Atlanta, GA (USA)
official selection – 2006. June 9-17.

19th Dallas Video Festival – Dallas, TX (USA)
official selection – 2006. August 10, 9:00 PM

3. Cinefest Miskolc – International Festival of Young Filmmakers – Miskolc, Hungary
Duna Television’s Special Award – 2006. September 16-23.

IV. Jewish Festival of Szombathely – Szombathely, Hungary
2006. September 13. 18:00 Savaria Cinema

2006 Berkeley Film & Video Festival – Berkeley, CA (USA)
Honorable Mention Award – 2006. October 6-8.

21st Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival – Fort Lauderdale, FL (USA)
official selection – 2006. October 16 – November 14.

2006 Jewish Eye World Jewish Film Festival – Beer Sheva, Israel
official selection – 2006. November

Duna TV (public service TV) – 2007. January 15. Monday 22:25
Duna TV – 2007. March. 16. Friday 4:45
Duna II. – 2007. March 18. Sunday 15:50

Kamera Hungária 2007 Television Program Festival – Pécs, Hungary
finalist – 2007. March. 29. – Apr. 1.

M2 (public service TV) – 2008. February 13. Wednesday 14:35
M2  – 2009. January 29. Thursday 23:15

Filmmakers

Produced, directed, photographed and edited by
Zsuzsanna Varga

Associate producer
Kelly St. John

Music
Michael Turner

Sound
Matthew Brunwasser, Jessie Deeter, Craig Delaval, Jeff Gove, Lisa Munoz, Sara Needham

Creative advisor
Jon Else

Editorial advisor
Deborah Hoffmann

Technical advisor
Kean Sakata

On-line editor
Karen Everett

Main cast (in order of appearance)
Yusuf Salahuddin, Khalesa Hasan, Willim Boynton, Victoria Evans, Charlie Marenghi

Other participants
T.J. Wedeman, Tressie Ball, Felicia Crump, Matt Gietl, Spencer Wolfe, Audrey Russano, Marcus Williams, Latoya Stroughter, Isaac Jabbar, Grady Jackson, Apollo DeLove, Maggie Richardson, Kisha Davidson, Monique Perry, Anthony Tatem

Special thanks to
Joan Bieder, William Drummond, Chris Jenkins, Kate Kline May, Bence Nanay, Linda Schacht
East Bay Conservation Corps: Jonathan Albert
SF Shakespeare Festival: Toby Leavitt, Charles McCue

Produced at the University of California at Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism

Copyright © 2000 Zsuzsanna Varga

SYNOPSIS

In Screw Your Courage, young African-Americans who’ve dropped out of high school try to get their lives back on track with an unusual project for their impoverished Oakland, CA neighborhood. After spending their days doing hard labor at minimum wage, they transform into bloody-handed kings and queens with a performance of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s Midnight Shakespeare program teaches inner-city youth communication, performance, discipline, and teamwork through Shakespeare. This ten-week program tries to respond to the problems of violence and gang-related issues. It culminates with a performance of Shakespearean scenes and monologues, with a set and props built by the participants during the course. Upon completing the program they are given a $100 stipend.

Screw Your Courage follows the rehearsal process from two young persons’ point of view. Yusuf and Khalesa are both 21 years old. Yusuf (Macbeth) used to be a drug dealer but turned his life around for a safer future. Khalesa (Lady Macbeth) has two children from two different fathers and she is trying to fulfill her dream to become a clothes designer. Both of them dropped out of high school, but now they continue studying for their GED at the East Bay Conservation Corps.

The first act shows the newcomers’ initiation into Shakespeare’s world, the participants’ first meeting with their teachers and each other.

The second act builds up the conflict in Yusuf’s and Khalesa’s life, as well as in the play. The actors face the necessity of relying on each other and trusting each other, which is anything but easy when attendance at rehearsals is irregular and hardly anyone makes the effort to memorize his lines.

In the third act everything is still open and rather chaotic. The disaster seems to be around the corner. The actors – together with the viewers – have no clue whether the performance will happen at all. It’s only two weeks away, but some of the actors are still fighting with their texts. The Elizabethan English challenges their tongues – the film shows the hard tries and failures, but also the moments when they catch the rhythm and the flow of the words. The participants’ enthusiasm is fluctuating and the rehearsal process takes an unexpected turn.

In the last act things are getting back into order, but even a few days before the performance the outcome is dubious…

The film’s main characters find the things in their lives reflect the Shakespearean conflicts. Power fights, betrayal, vanity, violence, assassination, revenge, broken families, superstition and remorse are issues that establish Macbeth’s plot and characterize today’s life, too. “I’ll go back no more, I am afraid to think of what I have done,” says Macbeth together with Yusuf, who had changed his life for good and has no desire to return to his past.

“War-story” (Challenges during filmmaking)

Riding the emotional roller-coaster with Khalesa…
Learning that Yusuf is going to become a father…
Muttering the tongue-twisting Elizabethan lines with them during the final performance…
Fighting for Yusuf’s words in the editing room to make his story concise, shaving words and building sound bites without altering the meaning, cheering about gaining fractures of a second….
Coming from Hungary, fearing the possibility of being rejected by a group of hard-life African-American teenagers, finding them extremely accepting, friendly and open to my absolutely different background….

I enjoyed and coped with the challenge of diversity. Producing, shooting and editing Screw Your Courage introduced me to different aspects of life in America, appealing and engaging personalities among grinding and rough circumstances.

AWARDS

Best Documentary Short Prize – The 25th Atlanta Film and Video Festival 2001

Best Short Doc Award – 2002 DocSide Documentary Film Festival, San Antonio, TX

Andrew A. Stern award for the most promising television documentary at the Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley in May 2000

Honorable Mention – Carolina Film and Video Festival 2001

EVENTS

KTOP-TV (Oakland, CA government access cable channel) – December 16th 2000

KQED (San Francisco – Bay Area PBS affiliate) – February 18th 2001 (as part of the series “Independent View”.)

Carolina Film and Video Festival (Greensboro, NC) – March 14 – 17 2001

Firstglance4 Philadelphia – March 26 – 30 2001

Fairfax Documentary Film Festival (Fairfax, CA) – March 31 2001

Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee – April 4 – 8 2001

John Hopkins Film Festival (Baltimore, MD) – April 12 – 15 2001

Mediawave International Festival of Visual Arts (Győr, Hungary) – April 27 – May 5 2001

Rochester International Film Festival (Rochester, NY) – May 4-7 2001

The 25th Atlanta Film and Video Festival (Atlanta, GA) – June 8-16 2001

New Orleans Film Festival – October 14-18 2001

Nextframe UFVA’s Touring Festival of International Student Film and Video – 2001-2002

Docside 2002 Documentary Film Festival (San Antonio, TX) – March 1-3 2002

Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA) presents Screw Your Courage on April 15th 2001 as part of “Lost and Found: Documentaries from the Graduate School of Journalism”