István Dárday’s professional career, his creative work as a film director and organiser of artistic projects, is inseparably intertwined with that of his constant creative partner, Györgyi Szalai. For this reason, their professional portrait will serve as documentation of both their oeuvres, with only minimal additions.

Nyugodtan meghalni (lit. To Die in Peace) (1970); Miheztartás végett (Due to the Attitude) (1971)

With his two graduation films Nyugodtan meghalni (lit. To Die in Peace, 1970) and Miheztartás végett (Due to the Attitude, 1971), István Dárday already attracted considerable attention. Györgyi Szalai also collaborated on these works. Decades later, when re-watched, it becomes clear why these films caught the eye of the profession.

To Die in Peace explores the relationship between a teenage girl and her parents, with a frankness and emotional depth rare not only for its time but even today. (The excellent reporting work of István Wisinger, a renowned Hungarian journalist, is also worth noting.) It is a rare achievement that the filmmakers manage to ask about everything, even the most delicate matters, confronting all participants with the opinions, memories of the others, exposing contradictions and distortions – yet without losing the human connection with their subjects. In contrast to the judgemental tone fashionable at the time, Dárday and his team respect the individuality of every participant, showing curiosity and looking beyond stereotypes. The film’s dramatic conclusion provides the finest example of this. From the start, we feel the filmmakers are on the side of the teenage girl and of young people in general; the strict mother gradually appears in an increasingly negative light, especially when it is revealed that she does not hesitate to use any means to uphold her principles. Yet, in the final moment, her life’s tragedy is revealed, and we learn of her shattered dream. We may not approve of her actions, but we understand her better.

Particular emphasis must be placed on the role of confrontations in the film’s authenticity. When one character speaks about another, the latter is often present, silently listening, reacting at least with facial expressions. As a technical device, the filmmakers already employ playback here: in this film, participants are confronted with recordings played back from tape recorders; later (for example, in Nevelésügyi sorozat [lit. Series on Education, a Hungarian television documentary cycle]) and elsewhere, they used film and video for this purpose.

The preparation for To Die in Peace took nearly a year, during which the creators studied the situations of dozens of young girls. Yet, in the end, they deliberately chose as the film’s protagonist a girl about whom they knew absolutely nothing. During filming, every discovery about the girl, her family, her suitors was new for the filmmakers themselves, coinciding with the audience’s own process of discovery, thus enhancing the documentary authenticity of the work’s dynamic.

Due to the Attitude examines the situation of young people at the level of social consciousness. The film unfolds entirely through montage: images are placed side by side with detachment – the school ceremony with its state and party slogans [here: the rhetoric of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party under state socialism], the church with Christian ideas, and finally the búcsú in the market [a traditional Hungarian village fair originally of religious origin], where sacred ideas are transformed into commodities, and where the young girl, as a worker, confronts the reality of the saying “work ennobles.”

Both films address the viewer directly, as later became evident in the ‘social distribution’ campaign [‘társadalmi forgalmazás’, a system of screenings in various non-traditional venues – factories, cultural houses, schools – characteristic of Hungary in the 1970s], which brought about countless screenings in the most diverse settings.

Short films

In the following two years, Dárday also made short films independently. Helyzetkép (lit. Situation Report, 1971) was produced at the Híradó- és Dokumentum Filmgyár (HDF, Hungarian News and Documentary Film Factory [the state-run studio responsible for official newsreels during socialism]). Its main advantage may have been that Dárday was able to familiarise himself with the institution from within – the Balázs Béla Studio [BBS, an avant-garde workshop pivotal in Hungarian experimental and documentary filmmaking] had in fact defined the requirements of the new Hungarian documentary film precisely in opposition to the standards of the HDF. Küldöttválasztás (lit. Election of Delegates, 1972), however, could only have been made at the BBS, since even a matter-of-factly neutral depiction of the young communists’ bureaucratic fumbling turned into deadly satire. Részvénytársaság Külsővaton (lit. Joint-Stock Company in Külsővat, 1973) was again produced at the HDF. It depicts a community effort connected with a home for the elderly. Perhaps the subject matter itself helped the filmmakers to break through the HDF’s legendary 17-minute time limit for short films – this work runs to almost twice that length.

Nevelésügyi sorozat (lit. Series on Education, 1973)

Nevelésügyi sorozat (lit. Series on Education, 1973) was the next major step in the career of the Dárday–Szalai creative duo. A five-member team was formed: directors of similar age and outlook joined forces in what was, at the time, an unprecedented undertaking. The result: a five-part series about a family of teachers.

The team: István Dárday, László Mihályfy, Györgyi Szalai, Pál Vilt and László Vitézy. The family portrait, by the depth of its presentation, became a comprehensive picture of the situation of Hungarian education. Here, for the first time, Dárday and his colleagues applied a tactic later characterised by László Vitézy as: “we made a film against the Communists with the Communists’ money”. It was a typical practice of the one-party state to organise campaigns on important issues, which began or ended with a Party resolution. Series on Education was associated with such a campaign, from which it drew the legitimacy – indispensable under a dictatorship – that later allowed it to detach itself from officialdom and to evolve into an independent work of art. Since the five-part film was an unmanageable colossus for contemporary film distribution, the creators saw it as their task to create special forms of distribution, accompanied by debates – this became the system of ‘social distribution’.

In terms of the development of Hungarian documentary filmmaking, the Series on Education belongs to the period when 16 mm technology – lighter and cheaper – had already come into general use. This technology proved decisive for the series in two respects. Firstly, it enabled the use of synchronous sound recording while keeping the camera in close proximity to people. Secondly, it allowed for the filming of several-minute so-called ‘long takes’. Yet the long take was more than a technical innovation. As the minutes pass during recording, those being filmed pay less and less attention to the camera, often forgetting its presence altogether, since they must concentrate on the life situation unfolding before them. Thus, when employed in genuine situations, the long take makes possible a more authentic representation than had previously been attainable. This was the case in many sequences of the Series on Education.

As Tamás Deme writes: “Series on Education is worth recalling from a distance of nearly four decades because it launched a unique Hungarian experiment in public culture. Here I may refer to my own personal experience, since as a researcher I myself took part in this experiment. The essence of the so-called ‘social distribution’ was that a documentary film about a given social group was screened specifically for audiences drawn from the same milieu, with the screening venue being their own workplace (in this case a school), and in the presence of its leaders (the headmaster and the local Party secretary). After the screening, almost everyone stayed on for a discussion with the director, in what became a kind of audience forum, where a moderator steered the debate and recorded the audience’s contributions on tape (to protect the speakers). It should be stressed that these documentary films were investigative, problem-seeking, and conflict-resolving in nature. I myself witnessed deeply moving scenes. The moments of catharsis did not occur on the screen, but in the lived reality of those present.

I carry indelible memories of an audience discussion we organised in one of the capital’s elite schools. Following the screening of a film about the professional and personal humiliation, indeed the misery, of teachers, we – together with the directors – received the comments of the audience (in the presence of the headmaster and the Party secretary). The first speaker greeted the film with the customary, official hosannas. The second remarked that the film portrayed grave problems, but how fortunate it was that none of these applied to their own staff, who knew nothing of such matters. The fourth speaker, in a sharp tone, demanded to know from which authority the director comrades had received permission to make such a film – and from where they had obtained permission to bring this ‘impossible’ work into the school, to which it had no connection. The fifth speaker, taking a deep breath and speaking with a breaking voice, declared: ‘None of the previous speakers has told the truth. Our set phrases are lies. We are indeed just like the characters in the film. Their torments, their unresolved difficulties, are ours too’ – and then broke down in tears.

It can quietly be concluded that these films, which spoke from soul to soul, were clearly among the precursors of social change. To use the jargon of the former regime, they were ‘softening works’. And so they were. They loosened the strictly controlled workplace communities. Did they incite rebellion? Perhaps. But only gently. Not with shouting, not in secrecy, but simply by holding up a mirror.”

Jutalomutazás (lit. Reward Trip, 1974)

In the wake of the success of the short films and the Series on Education, the opportunity of feature filmmaking opened up for the duo of István Dárday and Györgyi Szalai. The Budapest Film Studio headed at the time by István Nemeskürty [influential film and literature historian and studio director] accepted their proposal for a feature film to be made by unconventional methods, Jutalomutazás (lit. Reward Trip, 1974). The venture was risky in several respects: the filmmakers were both debutants, they worked with amateur actors, employed the costly 35 mm colour format, and even filmed key scenes using two cameras. Yet the outcome justified the risk.

There was, however, one situation the studio routine could not handle: that a film should have two authors, one of whom had completed film school, the other not entirely, and that one was a man, the other a woman. In the case of Reward Trip, compromises were made on several levels. On the one hand, in the credits Szalai was listed first, as the writer, and Dárday second. On the other hand, at the end of the film only Dárday was named as director, with the concession that Szalai was mentioned again immediately after the two assistant directors, as ‘collaborating director’. In the case of Filmregény (lit. Film Novel, 1977), the contradictory practice continued. At the beginning of the film we read: ‘The Budapest Játékfilm Stúdió (Budapest Feature Film Studio) presents / an István Dárday / Györgyi Szalai / film’. At the end, however, the credits declare: ‘written by / Györgyi Szalai / directed by / István Dárday’. An unfortunate situation arose, which at times still causes confusion today. The position of the present writer (András Szekfü) is that from the earliest years Dárday and Szalai developed such a close and multifaceted creative collaboration that, in their joint feature films, the traditional division of roles (director, screenwriter, collaborator) are meaningless. The overwhelming majority of their films should be regarded as the work of equal partners. This position was confirmed by the filmmakers themselves: whenever one of them received an individual artistic award, half of it was handed over to the other. Thus, Dárday shared half of his 2012 Kossuth Prize (the most prestigious cultural award in Hungary), while Szalai did the same with her 2013 Artist of Merit award.

“Reward Trip does indeed speak of the upper echelons of the one-party state, when the pioneer leader reads out the criteria for selecting which child should be sent on a reward trip”, I wrote of the film in 2010. “From the description it is immediately clear that the aim is not to find an objectively measurable winner of some (e. g. academic) competition, but rather to choose a puppet who can serve the regime’s own representational needs. (The film conveys this wittily when the camera zooms in on one of the pioneer puppets already shown earlier.) Even the sole measurable attribute, being a good pupil, is not considered as an intrinsic value here, but only as a prop for the self-representation of power. The child chosen for the reward trip is not travelling because he or she has earned it, but because the higher authority wishes to represent itself through that child. The lower-middle levels of authority (the pioneer leaders, the teachers, the Party secretary) seek the child most suitable for this representation, as becomes strikingly clear in the musical audition scenes. […] The unquestioning acceptance of higher instructions is part of the model depicted. […] The party-state leadership would scarcely have tolerated (direct) criticism of the upper levels. Even so, the film was already operating at the very limits of what could be tolerated in 1975.” (András Szekfü, 2010) Moreover, the couple in the film refuse to carry out the decision, their resistance amounting to a virtual rebellion against the formal mechanism.

Why does Reward Trip work more effectively than many other docudramas? Because here the participants were not required to ‘act out’ a story, but rather to respond in their own way to a given situation during the filming. The creators have explained in interviews that, beyond careful casting, the method contained a technical device: the participants were never shown the complete script. Nor were they told in advance what the other participant(s) in the scene would do or say. Each was prepared separately. The scene could not be rehearsed – it ‘happened’ in front of the camera. If the recording was unsuccessful, the same scene could not simply be repeated; instead, something different, something new, had to be devised.

The screenplay of Reward Trip was therefore extremely carefully prepared in advance, with its dramaturgy mapped out, even if this sometimes changed during shooting. The ‘civilian’ content of the scenes was thus layered onto this carefully constructed dramaturgical framework, enriching and authenticating it at the level of gesture and language.

Filmregény (lit. Film Novel, 1977)

Filmregény (lit. Film Novel, 1977) was made using the same method in terms of form, but in terms of content it took a bold step forward. Quoting from a contemporary review by Miklós Almási: “The central question of Film Novel, a work by István Dárday and Györgyi Szalai […] is the exploration of the inner, micro-world and social forces that inhibit social mobility. In this respect, it is a ruthless and comprehensive survey of the question: ‘where are we today?’ It follows the path of three sisters, condensing their destinies into a few years, but the Chekhovian allusion […] also points to the small tragedies which, however, direct the viewer’s thoughts towards more distant, horizon-level questions. For the film signals insoluble knots. Each of the three girls goes astray somewhere, their life paths are mistaken or threatened with derailment, even though no real horrors befall any of them. Yet by this restraint, by avoiding melodrama, the film nevertheless touches on the real danger: that the process of socialisation – entering life during the first few years – is not adventurous and perilous because of youthful inconsistency or excess, but because almost every step has to be experimented, at the risk of failure. It is this deeper layer that repeatedly emerges behind the girls’ ways of life, and that is what makes this ‘novel’ so intense.”

Társulás Filmstúdió (lit. Association Film Studio)

In the second half of the 1970s, several filmmakers simultaneously turned to the contradictory but promising genre of the fiction-documentary hybrid. (Among them: Judit Elek, István Dárday – Györgyi Szalai, Pál Schiffer, Judit Ember, Imre Gyöngyössy – Barna Kabay, Béla Tarr, Lívia Gyarmathy, László Vitézy.)

These films generally barely fitted into the framework of traditional film production. Several were not even made there, but at the Balázs Béla Studio or in co-production with it. The need became increasingly pressing for a studio for “non-conventional” films that would be equal to the four feature-film studios. This demand brought together filmmakers of very different temperaments, styles, and even worldviews, who – with István Dárday playing a leading role – fought for and negotiated the creation of Társulás Filmstúdió, which operated between 1981 and 1985. (Társulás became the fifth feature-film studio within MAFILM, the state film production company. Although it did not produce only feature films, legally it was part of a state enterprise, working with state funding.)

The founders: István Dárday, Pál Erdőss, Lívia Gyarmathy, Imre Gyöngyössy, Barna Kabay, László Mihályfy, Györgyi Szalai, Béla Tarr, László Vitézy, Pál Zolnay, János Xantus. Films were also made here by Gábor Bódy, György Fehér, Gyula and János Gulyás, and András Jeles.

This list shows that Dárday and Szalai succeeded in establishing here a creative community in which the renewal of genres (practically any film genre) in terms of content and/or form was the binding common goal. Around Társulás a group of social scientists also gathered. When Dárday and Szalai were shooting Átváltozás (lit. Transformation), political scientist István Schlett even took on the directorship of the studio. Mihály Bihari, Zoltán Bíró, Csaba Gombár, Zsolt Papp, Mihály Pohárnok and others joined as well.

During its short existence, Társulás enriched Hungarian cinema with works of great significance, among others: A kutya éji dala (The Dog’s Night Song) by Bódy, Álombrigád (Dream Brigade) by Jeles, Ne sápadj! (lit. Don’t Grow Pale!) by the Gulyás brothers, and Panelkapcsolat (Prefab People) and Őszi almanach (Autumn Almanac / Almanac of Fall) by Béla Tarr.

Átváltozás (lit. Transformation) (1984)

Dárday and Szalai made their film Átváltozás (lit. Transformation, 1984) within the framework of Társulás. The conflict in the film was similar to the struggles surrounding the attempt of the Fiatal Írók József Attila Köre (Attila József Circle of Young Writers [a socialist-era literary association]) to launch a journal – perhaps this was one reason for the problems with the cultural-political leadership. Transformation received mixed critical reception. Its composition and the exciting contrasts of coexisting generations were praised. Critics also valued the way real life intruded into the closed setting. At the same time, the film was criticised for its so-called excessive length, it was felt to be falling apart, with a loosening of form. From a film-historical perspective, it was probably a matter of the two filmmakers beginning to undergo a transformation in their worldview and artistic approach, making the film a transition between Film Novel and the even more radical A dokumentátor (The Documentator).

Although by 1985–86 the crisis of the one-party state was already palpable, nobody yet expected the collapse of the system. And the system still had enough strength to strike at and shut down Társulás. In their recollections, Dárday and Szalai always emphasise that the closure of Társulás was greeted with great satisfaction by the power elite of the film industry.

Through the joint effort of political power and the profession, Társulás was abolished, but after half a year it began to re-form, first as the “2446 Visual Cost Centre”, then from 1987 as Mafilm Mozgókép Innovációs Társulás (Mafilm Motion Picture Innovation Association). The dissolution of 1985 created a serious collective creative crisis, nevertheless, in the following period the earlier creative strategies revived…

The difficulties encountered by the creators of Társulás in their further work are illustrated, for example, by the ordeal of Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó (Satantango), whose production dragged on for years. The opening credit of the next major Dárday–Szalai documentary-feature is also telling.

A dokumentátor (The Documentator, 1988)

At the beginning of A dokumentátor (The Documentator, 1988) the following caption informs the viewer: “Made / at the Hunnia Film Studio Company / with the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture, / Mokép / and the / Motion Picture Innovation Association.” Thus, it was not Hunnia that produced it, only that it was made at their premises. It was not made by the Motion Picture Innovation Association, only with their collaboration. Mokép [the state film distribution company] also took part, as did the Ministry itself. It must have been a difficult birth. Despite these difficulties, however, a film of powerful impact was born, opening a new phase in the Dárday–Szalai oeuvre, and receiving the FIPRESCI Prize of the international film critics at the 1988 Berlinale.

This film is indeed flooded with the documents of its age. In the end credits one can read a long list of the newsreel extracts and documents that have been shown. The film itself seems to “document” a struggle, as the world’s (mainly cinematic) documents, and through them the great conflicts of humanity, are superimposed on a private conflict. A special role is given to the recent Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which dominates the film as a cosmic sign. Even those who were not convinced by this montage of private life and collective tragedies (and there were such criticisms) found themselves confronted with the overwhelming force and visual power of the film.

M.I.T.: Mozgókép Innovációs Társulás (lit. Motion Picture Innovation Association)

The regime change [the Hungarian transition from state socialism to parliamentary democracy in 1989–90] found Dárday and Szalai in an uncertain position: the Társulás Stúdió had been dissolved a few years earlier by the cultural leadership of the one-party state, yet with great difficulty they managed to maintain a kind of continuity resembling a creative group under various name-variations of Mozgókép Innováció (Motion Picture Innovation). Despite the difficulties, several important films were produced at the M.I.T.—in addition to those already mentioned, for example Kizárt a párt (lit. Excluded by the Party, dir. Béla Szobolits), Bolse Vita (dir. Ibolya Fekete), and others.

At the same time, the political transition pulled the rug out from under the four previously dominant feature film studios: they were transformed, dissolved, re-founded, disappeared – entirely new structures emerged, and every participant was seeking their place in the new market economy, within the sphere of the Magyar Mozgókép Alapítvány (lit. Hungarian Motion Picture Foundation), later Magyar Mozgókép Közlapítvány (MMKA, Motion Picture Public Foundation of Hungary).

Dárday and Szalai’s situation was further complicated by the fact that amid the turbulence of the political transition, they managed to realise an old dream: in 1989 they acquired the Kinizsi Cinema in Budapest, and operated it under the name M.I.T. VIDEÓ- ÉS MOZIKLUB (lit. M.I.T. Video and Cinema Club). From 1991 it functioned under the name Blue Box, as a film-centred but not exclusively screening-based cultural club. For ten and a half years they struggled with (primarily financial) difficulties; then, in autumn 1999 the owner, Budapest Film, closed Blue Box, which it regarded as competition.

Nyugattól keletre, avagy a média diszkrét bája (lit. From West to East, or the Discreet Charm of Media, 1993)

In 1993, Dárday and Szalai made a film satire entitled Nyugattól keletre, avagy a média diszkrét bája (lit. From West to East, or the Discreet Charm of the Media). They did not depict their own direct personal experiences in the (new) world of the media, yet the whole film is marked by the bitterness of what they had lived through, which, according to the laws of satire, at times turns into laughter and at other times into a shock akin to weeping. This film too is a kind of “reward trip”: only here, on the occasion of Consumers’ Day [a symbolic socialist-era celebration of consumption], a prize is to be awarded, and thus an oversized television set is carried across the country. The brilliant metaphor of the film lies in the fact that the television has no switch-off button; it pours out images and sounds unstoppably. It would be difficult to find a more apt symbol of the life relationship between man and television, so reminiscent of bondage. Some critics, however, objected to the film’s length, claiming that the working out of the central idea became overextended.

It is worth noting that the main roles are not played by non-professional actors, but by figures who move on the borders of film and entertainment industry, avant-garde personalities in their own right: János Regős [Hungarian theatre director, performer] and András Szőke [Hungarian filmmaker, actor]. Had the creators abandoned their faith in the living material that non-professional actors can mobilise? Hardly. Yet it follows from the very nature of satire that characters cannot simply live their lives; instead, they must enact roles.

Tükröződések (Reflections, 1998)

Tükröződések (Reflections, 1998) was the filmmakers’ next major undertaking. The two principal locations of the film are of symbolic value: Venice, appearing as the quintessence of European culture, and New York, which evidently represents America, the victorious new world. Reflections remains to this day the most heavily stylised of their films. Most scenes are seen in a wavering image, as though reflected in water, though not upside down. This wavering is a powerful tool of stylisation: it highlights the classical beauty of the settings, yet repeatedly fragments them, ultimately depicting the fundamental instability of the world. When, exceptionally, a still (non-wavering) image appears, one already suspects: could this be a lull in the wind? But the wind – the wind of history – soon stirs again.

“There is only one story, only one dramaturgy, which begins, happens and ends, says one of the minor characters in Reflections, in a hospital conversation. This proposition could indeed be taken as valid for the entire film. In the story of a single individual, István Dárday and Györgyi Szalai strive to reveal universal meanings. Compared with the directors’ earlier two films – The Documentator, a panorama of the political transition, and From West to East…, a picaresque tale embodying a critique of the media – Reflections is an unusually ambitious enterprise. In pursuit of general connections, it raises questions that had almost vanished from contemporary cinema, with its fascination for fragmented truths and ironic games. Moreover, it finds an unconventional form for such an elevated subject: it grafts philosophy onto fiction and vision onto documentary, presenting the viewer at first sight with a serious challenge if they are to find their way in the film’s world.” – as critic Balázs Varga notes.

Az emigráns – Minden másképp van (lit. The Emigrant – Everything Is Different, 2006)

The outstanding feature film project of the 2000s is Az emigráns – Minden másképp van (lit. The Emigrant – Everything Is Different, 2006), about the old age and death of writer and poet Sándor Márai (1900–1989). It seems inevitable that Dárday and Szalai should turn to the oeuvre of this great outsider, the relentless critic of both National Socialism and the communist regime, the author of so many confessions by citizens. From interviews we know that they would have liked to portray Márai with a non-professional performer too, but the scale and nature of the task did not allow for this. Fortunately, one might say, since the actors Ferenc Bács, and Katalin Gyöngyössy as the wife, give the film great weight and depth. Once again, we quote Tamás Deme: “The Emigrant, presenting the last months of Márai, is a key film. Its symbolism allows us to understand the Hungarian sense of life after the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the tragedy of emigration. It tells us more about the victims of Hungarian history than dozens of studies. Its impact comes not only from the bitter historical facts, but also from the bodily and spiritual vibrations presented with immense empathy, and the authentic phenomena of life. How the quarrels turn into the anger of incomprehension. What can an intellectual, broken in spirit, do when he has to lift the helpless body of his spouse lying on the ground? What does a person sum up when he is long past the time of life that is impossible to summarise, and prepares to wrap himself into nothingness? The subtitle of The Emigrant tells us a lot: ‘everything is different.’ This is the motto of Dárday and Szalai.”

Nem sokaság, hanem lélek (lit. Not Multitudes, but Souls)

If the films of Dárday and Szalai in the 2000s were to be subsumed under a single concept, it could be “national pilgrimage.” Nem sokaság, hanem lélek (lit. Not Multitudes, but Souls) reports on this civic initiative. But in fact, in recent years the filmmakers undertake such a pilgrimage in all their films: they present abandoned small villages coming back to life, they protest against the closure of small post offices (which could mean the death of villages), and in several films they present the works of renowned architect Imre Makovecz, whom they deeply respect and admire, both in Hungary and in Hungarian-populated regions of neighbouring countries.

In all these films the nation is set in motion: the people portrayed always want something, and they act to achieve it. If we place this decade and a half within the context of Dárday and Szalai’s half-century-long oeuvre, it may seem like a loss that irony – even affectionate irony – has almost completely disappeared from their depiction, something that had characterised their early documentaries. However, the audience is compensated by the fact that they encounter kind and serious people, within such beautiful Hungarian landscapes that watching them is itself a delight. And, fortunately, this dual oeuvre is by no means finished!

[2016]