Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 2006 (18. évfolyam, 1-50. szám)
2006-01-06 / 2. szám
AMERICAN ./«iffmfflflffJWflMI Hungarian Journal An Unforgettable Evening in Budapest Two directors enchanted the Budapest audience The Budapest audience has recently seen - one performance each - a play directed by Cserey Erzsi (Elizabeth de Charay) director of New York’s Hungarian This is the story of a woman who brings up her young son alone, the little rascal dictates his own laws and the story itself belongs to our everyday lives, with the emphasis Theatre, and another directed by Károly Sziki, head of the Varga László Polgári Teátrum theatrical ensemble. On December 8, 2005, the Budapest “Magyar Ház” (Hungarian House, Cultural Center) presented author Gerty Agoston’s monodrama “Gyermekem, Gyilkosom” - English title “My Killer, My Kid” - as one of the highlights of a one-week Festival, entitled “Split Emotions”. It was the Festival’s aim to give a cultural summary of the activity of those Hungarian-born men and women with a double cultural identity. This has been the second Festival of its kind, organized by Margit Kurunczy and the American NBN-TV, in Budapest. This time, it was honored by the American-based author Gerty Agoston’s presence and two of her one-act dramas were shown. The first monologue-drama, “My Killer, My Kid”, actually the second part of a trilogy, played by Erzsi Cserey, became a cathartic, purifying event because of the actress’s great creation. The subject, the theme of that play is so international that it might as well be the monologue of a woman from Budapest or Székesfehérvár. on the influence of the media. Possibly not everyone realizes the fact that - compared to the size of its population - Hungary is today one of the leading media consumers, and the “media-hunger” of our children, without critical discrimination, has become a real problem even here in Hungary. Gerty Ágoston cuts into many problems in her play and it is one of her strokes of genius that she has a message for the audience and he or she who saw the play will, leaving the theater, start to ponder and be inclined to debate. How great is the responsibility of the media for the “world-picture” of our children? Where is the part the family must play? What happens, ever so often, to the Christian morale which has been the basic pillar of all societies? Now, at the time of advent, the drama is perhaps even timelier than we might assume and it does perhaps awaken the audience to the fact how important a role the family must play. It should not be expressed by the presents given, but it should indeed manifest itself in true love of the souls, and, by that love, have its own frontiers. Erzsi Cserey has become one of DUNA Travel 8530 Holloway Dr. #102 W. Hollywood, CA 90069 SPECIÁLIS ÁR LAX-BUD-LAX $439.-Információért hívják ZSUZSÁT TEL: (310) 652-5294 FAX: (310) 652-5287 1-888-532-0168 +TX. the greatest actresses - what she presents on the stage is real life, a heart-wrenching whirlpool of events, and we, the audience, are running with her toward fate. While the tormented mother sheds her real tears, in those gripping moments, we almost join her in crying. The loud applause expresses our shared feelings with the mother, and, at the same time, means gratitude to the author as well. Erzsi Cserey has been awarded the Prize of Hungarian Identity at this occasion. The last confession of an Arabic terrorist, before his death, on camera, is the subject of author Gerty Agoston’s second play. It is also her newest, and its subject is part of today’s timely problems. The author tackles serious and extremely timely moral questions which have occupied us especially since September 11. - Must we cherish our loved ones, our environment, our nation more than any moral standard? Are we allowed to annihilate anyone just for the purpose of bettering our family’s or our nation’s fate some day? Can we achieve happiness, good luck, through the death of other people? Those are heavy, serious questions and they do remind me of the newsreels of summer 1914... and then what happened? Millions of people died during World War One, and the conclusion of the problem is very difficult even after all those years. “Rosary” is the title of Gerty Agoston’s second drama. That Rosary belongs to one of the protagonist’s victims. He has been killed, and the rosary becomes a symbol. It does not mean anything to the non-Christian, just like the lives of those hostages. Directed by Károly Sziki, the director invented another person, he is sort of a video-director and moves a TV- camera on the stage. Thus, the terrorist’s monologue blends at times into a dialogue with the “director”. Do we now hear two terrorists? In Gerty Agoston’s drama, it is not someone’s religious belief - be it the Koran or the Bible - and the defense of those religions that plays the leading role but the author’s stance that the right to live must be defended. The monologue also emphasizes that, without an ideal, life will end in a dead-end street, and that brutal violence does not lead anywhere. In the end, the protagonist (terrorist) dies. While he is dying, he realizes that he has been a victim to fraud and lies, and his death, actually, means the death of the idea of terrorism as well. Originally, it must be said, author Gerty Ágoston has imagined a one-actor drama, the terrorsit talking directly to the audience on stage as well as in a possible TV-production or a film. However, this version (a twocharacter version) as invented and produced by Sziki’s the Varga László Polgári Teátrum, is exciting in its own right. By the way, the author in real life, is a very upbeat and happy person known by her sense of humor, and many sarcastic, humorous works. This time, she has chosen a tragedy. This performance was a truly festive occasion. We had the opportunity to meet, in the audience, that great hero of the Hungarian 1956 uprising, Sándor Rácz. István Takács Január 6, 2006 ÍD Lajos Koltai's "Fateless" Opens in the U.S. The long awaited film made from Imre Kertesz’ Nobel .-Prizewinning novel, “Fateless” is opening this week in New York, and at the end of January in Los Angeles. FATELESS, an epic adaptation of the contemporary classic novel by Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész, represents the directorial debut of Oscar-nominated cinematographer Lajos Koltai, and boasts a screenplay by Kertész himself. The film is produced by András Hámori, and the cinematographer is Gyula Pados. Set in 1944, as Hitler’s Final Solution becomes policy throughout Europe, FATELESS is the semi-autobiographical tale of a 14 year-old Jewish boy from Budapest, who finds himself swept up by cataclysmic events beyond his comprehension. A perfectly normal metropolitan teen who has never felt particularly connected to his religion, he is suddenly separated from his family as part of the rushed and random deportation of his city’s large Jewish population. Brought to a concentration camp, his existence becomes a surreal adventure in adversity and adaptation, and he is never quite sure if he is the victim of his captors, or of an absurd destiny that metes out salvation and suffering arbitrarily. When he returns home after the liberation, he misses the sense of community he experienced in the camps, feeling alienated from both his Christian neighbors who turned a blind eye to his fate, and the Jewish family friends who avoided deportation and who now want to put the war behind them. Imre Kertesz said the following at a Nobel Lecture about the Holocaust and his role in writing about it: “It is often said of me - some intend it as a compliment, others as a complaint - that I write about a single subject: the Holocaust. I have no quarrel with that. Why should I not accept ... the place assigned to me on the shelves of libraries? Which writer today is not a writer of the Holocaust? I have never tried to see the complex of problems referred to as the Holocaust merely as the insolvable conflict between Germans and Jews. I never believed that it was the latest chapter in the history of Jewish suffering, which followed logically from their earlier trials and tribulations. I never saw it as a one-time aberration, a large-scale pogrom, a precondition for the creation of Israel. What I discovered in Auschwitz is the human condition, the end point of a great adventure, where the European traveler arrived after his two-thousand-year-old moral and cultural history. Now the only thing to reflect on is where we go from here.” * * * When asked whether the film fulfilled his expectations, director Lajos Koltai said this:- Yes. The film’s greatest virtue is that it speaks with clear-cut, lucid scenes. It clearly answers the question for which there is really no answer: “How could all this have happened?” It tells a story that suggests that in today’s world, anything can happen to people at any time: anyone can be taken off a bus, anyone can be forced, at any time, to fear someone else - this is the film’s message. Fateless doesn’t want to say more. It simply prepares you for the bad since what can happen in this world might not be good. We did not make a Holocaust film - we simply told the story of a boy. We are not prodding the audience to shed tears, but if in their souls they relate so strongly to the boy that they become emotionally involved with the story, they will break into tears. Interestingly enough, every time I see Fateless again, I don’t distance myself from it as I do with my other films, but I feel closer and closer to it. Fateless opens in Los Angeles on January 27, 2006. Daniel Craig (L.) and Marcell Nagy in Lajos Koltai’s Fateless. Magyar Ifirlap
