Sándor Buglya is, quite literally, a child of liberation – or at least of the peace that followed the Second World War. His parents were married on 4 April 1945 [the Soviet-announced ‘liberation day’ in Hungary under post-war communist rule], and he was born on 16 December in Újkécske [a town in central Hungary]. [1]
His father came from Baraolt in Covasna County [Hungarian: Barót, a Székely/Hungarian town in present-day Romania]. As a young member of the Hungarian-speaking Székely community of Transylvania, he crossed the so-called “green border” [illicit, unguarded frontier crossing] into Hungary at the end of the war. He worked as a shoemaker, but in the 1950s, in order to secure his family’s financial stability, he took on various jobs: he completed an accounting course, worked as a tractor driver, and later as a lorry driver for the 5th TEFU [state transport company]. In the winter of 1954, exceptionally heavy snowfall led him to supplement his income by shovelling snow at night. It may well have been one of the factors behind the fatal car accident he suffered in Budapest after setting off while exhausted.
In 1946 the family moved to Budakeszi, where they were given accommodation in the courtyard of a Swabian house. The German settlements around Budapest were severely affected by the post-war expulsions [the forced deportation of Hungary’s ethnic German population in 1946–48] – one of Buglya’s important documentary films, Sváb passió (Swabian Passion Play), would commemorate this experience forty years later. It was almost natural that the children learned German in order to feel at home in Budakeszi, and Sándor Buglya studied the language in private lessons. This would later prove to be of lasting value.
The maternal branch of the family, living in the ‘tanya’ world [Hungarian outlying farmsteads] around Nagykőrös, their peasant roots, and above all the grandfather’s wisdom and ethos, grounded in lived experience and clear principles, would prove decisive in the future director’s life. Buglya spent the summers of his childhood and adolescence with his grandparents in Kocsér, and after his father’s death he even lived there for half a year, attending a one-class rural school. On the farm he became familiar not only with agricultural work but also with his grandfather’s attitude to life: a boundless sense of duty, a calm acceptance of problems and losses, and a disciplined way of living.
Equally decisive in Buglya’s formation were his journeys to Transylvania to visit his father’s family. These could take place only after his father’s death, as he himself had been afraid to return home, fearing that the Romanian authorities might not allow him back into Hungary. In 1956, Sándor Buglya met his Székely grandmother for the first time – and from that moment she regarded him as her son in place of the one she had lost.
The relatives in Barót lived in considerable poverty, yet they never complained. On his increasingly frequent trips to Transylvania – already in the 1960s, as a university student – the curious and open young man came into personal contact with outstanding figures of Hungarian intellectual life in the region: Edgár Balogh [Hungarian writer, journalist and cultural organiser], Zoltán Kallós [ethnographer, collector of folk music and traditions], Dr Károly Kós [Hungarian architect, writer and cultural figure], József Gazda [Hungarian literary historian and critic], Árpád Zsoldos [Transylvanian Hungarian intellectual and cultural organiser], and others – although at the time he was, of course, unaware of their full historical and cultural significance.
The film director
With such roots and a moral–intellectual background, it seemed only natural that the diligent young man should choose a serious and useful vocation. He applied to Semmelweis Orvostudományi Egyetem (SOTE, Semmelweis University of Medical Sciences, today Semmelweis University). After completing secondary school he enrolled as a medical student, even though, prior to choosing a career, two fields had electrified him with equal passion: biology and film. During his grammar-school years he went to the cinema incessantly – on some days watching as many as five or six films. The 1960s were a golden era for Hungarian cinema [the internationally acclaimed “Hungarian New Wave”], which affected him aesthetically, intellectually and personally, and he even flirted with the idea of becoming a film historian [2]. He recognised his most intimate desires and questions in the films of the period, for example in Oldás és kötés (The Confession, 1963). In Miklós Jancsó’s film – [Miklós Jancsó, Hungarian film director, key figure of modernist cinema] – a young doctor, adrift in his superficial urban existence and uncertain of his calling, even of the meaning of his life (played by Zoltán Latinovits [Hungarian actor, icon of 1960s–70s Hungarian cinema]), visits his father living on a farm. There he is forced to confront where he once came from, and to understand where he is heading. For the young medical student, this film became a deeply personal and formative experience.
Alongside his medical studies, he ultimately did not neglect his other great love, film. In an unusual way, it was precisely the medical university that provided the opportunity. In his second year he became the central audience organiser of the SOTE, and was able to cover his expenses by selling theatre and concert tickets. In the KISZ office [Kommunista Ifjúsági Szövetség – the Hungarian Young Communist League], where the audience organisation operated, he happened to hear that some leftover budget money had to be spent. In a single day he purchased a camera, a projector, a tape recorder and a projection screen, and founded the Medikus Amatőrfilm Stúdió (lit. Medical Students’ Amateur Film Studio). Characteristically, at a time when he had barely seen a camera anywhere other than in a shop window, Buglya was so inexperienced in the technical aspects of filmmaking that he did not even buy editing equipment, simply because he did not realise it was necessary. Indeed, he shot his very first film using strictly consecutive shots – there is no editing in it at all.
Nevertheless, at the founding meeting, it was the inexperienced first-year student – the very person who had organised the studio – whom the older students elected as leader, even though among them were some who not only owned equipment but had already made films themselves. Only a few days earlier, the young medical student had merely been dreaming of filmmaking – and suddenly he found himself at the head of a studio.
All of this is highly characteristic of Sándor Buglya’s career. A distinctive temperament took shape within him – observant, intent on understanding processes, and patiently waiting for the right moment to act – a quality that would later predestine him for the role of a calm and thoughtful leader. For this reason, leadership and organisational responsibilities generally found him, rather than the other way round. The same powers of observation made him capable, as a filmmaker, of noticing the small details – the seemingly insignificant moments that, nonetheless, fundamentally shape the course of events – a major virtue in a documentary director.
The Medical Students’ Amateur Film Studio provided an outstanding opportunity to master technical skills. During his university years, he was involved as director, cinematographer or editor in more than thirty productions, large and small. His everyday studies and the process of becoming a doctor required both scientific objectivity and a direct engagement with people. This environment and outlook shaped his attitude to filmmaking. In a good documentary, it is precisely sensitivity to problems and an empathetic approach that can truly reach the viewer. In Buglya’s case, medicine and filmmaking formed a harmonious unity.
They filmed surgical operations, produced film demonstrations for scientific student research projects, and shot educational films for medical students – for example, on gallbladder surgery. He regarded filmmaking not only as a form of self-expression, but also as a kind of service. Several of their films addressed aspects of university life. In one, for instance, a young medical student first confronts death; another deals with the anxieties of an expectant mother before childbirth.
In addition to the numerous prizes won at amateur film festivals, the 1967 national review saw the SOTE film studio recognised as the best amateur film group in Hungary. As a fourth-year medical student, Buglya was elected to the leadership of the MAFSZ (Magyar Amatőrfilm Szövetség [lit. Hungarian Amateur Film Association]) and one year later he became its general secretary. He has remained a member of the Association’s leadership – and of its successor organisation [3] – to this day. He served as general secretary until 1976, became president in 1992, and, in 1998, in recognition of his work, was appointed “permanent honorary president”.
Between 1974 and 1994, for twenty-one years, he also served on the leadership of the international amateur film federation operating under the auspices of UNESCO [4], representing Hungary on the international stage.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a serious amateur film movement was flourishing in Hungary. It is striking how many original talents were active in this field during that period. Not only those who would later establish themselves as professional filmmakers, whose work has since become part of Hungarian film history [5], but also many who never went on to pursue a so-called film career [6], yet whose surviving works are unquestionably of value. Perhaps even more importantly, beyond the films themselves there existed a distinctive spirit that manifested not only in the finished works, but also in the milieu that made their creation possible. Even forty or fifty years later, one cannot but admire the freedom and creativity that radiate from these films – despite all the technical difficulties involved in their making [7].
And this does not even take into account those workshops – alongside the Medikus group, for example Cinema ’64, ELTE AFK (ELTE Amatőr Film Klub [lit. Eötvös Loránd University Amateur Film Club]), Budai Fotó és Filmklub (lit. Buda Photo and Film Club), Budapesti Amatőrfilm Klub (lit. Budapest Amateur Film Club), and groups in Győr, Szeged, Szolnok, Kőbánya, and elsewhere – whose interests the Association sought to represent. It organised various festivals, screening opportunities and public showings, and published a stencil-printed journal, which, despite its somewhat samizdat-like appearance [unofficial, semi-underground publication typical of the socialist period], was far more than a closed-circuit newsletter: it also served as an aesthetic, critical and public forum. Buglya edited Amatőrfilm (lit. Amateur Film) for more than ten years. At the time, he was one of the most dedicated organisers of this community. He organised domestic and international festivals and forums, and screened the members’ films. In short, he represented this narrow segment of film culture – naturally, as unpaid, voluntary work. There was even a year in which he took the films to 136 community screenings across the country. As he could not afford train tickets, he travelled by hitchhiking.
In 1969 he won the competition Készítsünk együtt filmet (lit. Let’s Make a Film Together), launched by Magyar Televízió (MTV, Hungarian Television). Viewers were able to follow the entire process of filmmaking, from shooting through editing to the premiere. In nine live broadcasts, the four participants in the programme were able to make a short feature film on 16 mm stock, based on Katalin Keller’s short story Esőben (lit. In the Rain). In the end, he shared the prizes with the Gulyás brothers [Gábor and Gyula Gulyás – Hungarian documentary filmmakers]: Sándor Buglya received both the directing prize and the audience award. For him, however, the most important “outcome” of the competition was neither the main prize nor national recognition, but the fact that he met his future wife, Ágnes Kulics, who at the time was working at the television as an editor [8].
After completing his medical studies, in 1972 Buglya was admitted to the second-degree programme of the Színház- és Filmművészeti Főiskola (Academy of Drama and Film, today University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest), specialising in cinematography [9]. He graduated in 1976, and later, in 1981, obtained a further diploma there in film and television directing. István Nemeskürty [Hungarian writer, film historian and cultural politician], head of Budapest Filmstúdió (Budapest Film Studio), who saw in him a potential “new István Gaál” [Hungarian film director], invited the newly graduated filmmaker to write a feature film screenplay. However, the completed script did not prove sufficiently inspiring for Buglya. As a result, in an unusual move, the young filmmaker declined several commissions from one of the country’s most important film studios, as he did not feel he would be able to realise in those projects what he truly wanted to express. Much later he worked as artistic director and consultant on the feature films of others [10], but he himself did not wish to direct a feature film.
The list of moving-image works he has directed or shot, however, exceeds 400 titles. It is almost impossible to count in how many films he has been involved as producer, screenwriter, editor, consultant, or supervising instructor. He worked across an exceptionally wide range of genres: newsreels, feature-length documentaries, television programmes, film études, films on the visual arts, animated films, as well as popular-scientific and educational films. In all his work, a creative drive and a love for the subject are always present. It is important to him to find joy, authenticity and inspiration in every role and every genre. What truly interests him is the composition of life’s small, often unconscious movements into a coherent form, and the creation of a broader picture, a tableau, out of them. He has always been drawn to those tasks that allowed for such realisation. Just as in life he delights in observing even the smallest gestures, so, in a sense, he is always filming – even when he is not actually recording what he sees on film. Through filmmaking he seeks to convey this observing attitude, opening the viewer’s eye to the determining significance of moments that may at first appear incidental.
After graduating from the Academy, he worked for three years at the Katonai Filmstúdió (lit. Military Film Studio [Hungarian Army film unit]). The head of the studio, Mihály Illés, invited him to join on the understanding that he could work independently, with no formal obligations – he could do whatever he wished. He was entrusted with the production of short cinema films, newsreels and training films. At times, strict confidentiality applied to certain projects he made for military training purposes. During the shooting of the, today almost comically titled, Ellátó század harcban (lit. Supply Company in Combat), for instance, he directed the movements and cinematic set-ups of several dozen vehicles and tanks. He also made a film about illiterate conscripts encountering written language for the first time in the army.
It was likewise here that he made the short documentary Változatok gyermekhangra (lit. Variations for Children’s Voices), built on archival footage and focusing on children exploited for many different purposes throughout the twentieth century – a film whose powerfully articulated longing for peace clearly reveals Buglya’s lyrical disposition. This work became his diploma film in directing at the Academy. In any case, he was able to work independently, and in great quantity and variety, thereby rapidly acquiring the practical experience and professional confidence that his fellow graduates, placed in other fields and lacking similar opportunities, could not hope to gain so quickly. From the Military Film Studio he transferred in 1979 to the Directing Department of MAFILM (MAFILM Hungarian National Film Production Company), where he was appointed as a director.
Although he did attempt to reconcile filmmaking with the medical profession, it was evident that a way of life in which daytime editing was followed by night shifts in hospital – and then the reverse – could not be sustained for long. After obtaining his directing diploma, he gave up the practice of medicine, yet he did not entirely break away from the world of healthcare. He worked for the Egészségnevelési Intézet (lit. Institute for Health Education), and for many years continued to produce medical, health-education and popular-science films [11].
Buglya Sándor tested his talent in almost every genre. He had already made poetic film études in his amateur years. Among his films on visual arts, particularly noteworthy is Ahogyan láttam, és ahogyan elképzelem (lit. As I Saw It, and As I Imagine It) [12], made about Pálné Pozsgai (née), a naïve painter from Győrsövényház, whose works are expressive in their very simplicity, a work reminiscent of similar films by Zoltán Huszárik [film director and visual artist]. Among the several hundred moving images in which Buglya was involved as both director and cinematographer, it is the documentaries that proved the most defining.
The cinema-released Sváb passió (Swabian Passion Play, 1989) was the film with which he entered the front rank of Hungarian documentary filmmaking. The work examines the circumstances of the 1946 deportation of the Germans of Budaörs. The basic situation is symbolic not only because Budaörs was the first Hungarian village from which the Swabian population was deported (today scarcely a tenth of the former German-speaking population remains there), but also because of the timing of the police actions, which were deliberately scheduled for the period of the parish feast and the accompanying Corpus Christi procession. In the film, the evoked suffering of Christ is placed in parallel with the ordeal of a violently uprooted and dispossessed community. Attentive to detail and meticulously structured, the film is also a personal testament by a director who himself grew up in a Swabian village and a Swabian house – a confession to the inner greatness of simple people who could not influence historical processes yet were forced to endure them, and to a wisdom that was at times even capable of forgiveness.
Its counterpart is the film series Az erdélyi szász kultúra nyomában (lit. In the Footsteps of Transylvanian Saxon Culture), completed in 2002, which explores the eight-hundred-year history and fate of the Transylvanian Saxons [a German-speaking community settled in Transylvania since the Middle Ages]. As a consequence of Romanian nationalist policies, the Saxon population has by now been reduced to a mere fraction of its former size. Compact yet richly nuanced, the series presents the most important characteristics of the Saxon spirit, highlights the role played by German-speaking citizens in the flourishing of Transylvania, and approaches their trials from the perspective of ordinary people. This too is a passion narrative – the story of simple individuals, this time the Saxons, seeking paths of survival in the face of state-supported, covert or overt violence.
The political transition of 1989–90 opened up the possibility of speaking openly about previously suppressed events in Hungarian history. A significant number of Sándor Buglya’s works belong to a line of films that process the history of the world wars, deportations and labour camps, and that stand as memorials to the trials and suffering inflicted upon ordinary, mostly innocent people. In Úz-völgyi hegyomlás (lit. Landslide in the Uz Valley, 1996) [13], the Székely border guards who, during the Second World War, heroically defended the then Hungarian frontier in the Carpathians – despite inadequate leadership – and held their ground for a long time against overwhelming force, offer not only examples of soldierly virtue, but also of loyalty and love of homeland.
Transylvania is also the setting of Úgy mondjam, ahogy volt (lit. Let Me Say It As It Was, 2003), which recounts the fate of Transylvanian Hungarians rounded up in the camp at Földvár near Brașov and deported for so-called ‘málenkij robot’ [“little work”: euphemism for the Soviet deportation of civilians to forced labour]. Beyond the thoroughness of its historical investigation, what makes the film enduring is the almost intimate relationship it establishes with the elderly people recounting their suffering. We are witness to moments of recognition, to self-reflexive revelations in which an entire outlook on life – and its failure – is laid bare: even those who could have escaped the camp did not do so, presumably in the firm conviction of their own innocence. After all, they had committed no crime; there had to be some mistake. Beyond war and history, the film probes even deeper: the peasant ethos of an absolute sense of duty turns here into an unforgivable naivety, one that works against the prisoners, who were able to orient themselves only within the concepts of decency and honour.
The scarcely decade-long history of Hungarian-language education that took shape temporarily in the Romanian region of Moldavia, after the Second World War serves as the point of departure for Hogy vagytok tük es (How Are You, Then, 1998) [14]. The film’s conclusions already point towards the present day. Centuries of pressure failed to strip the Csángós [Hungarian-speaking Catholic minority in the Romanian region of Moldavia] of their Hungarian identity; for a few years they were able to study in their mother tongue, and at times were even permitted to sing in Hungarian during Mass. Those former teachers who witnessed the period that was so abruptly brought to an end in 1959 not only speak of the difficulties of organising schooling, but, through their accounts, reveal the nature of Romanian nationalism, which has always functioned as a state ideology. It showed a more accommodating face only when some higher political interest demanded it. The report-film hardly ventures beyond the rooms that serve as the locations of the interviews, yet it sketches an infernal world in which people have for centuries lived under conditions where power even questions their right to exist, and in which self-denial is indispensable not only for any hope of advancement, but even for the most basic peace of mind.
Sándor Buglya also gladly turned to the countryside, to villages and to themes concerning peasant life when historical traumas were not at the centre of a film, but rather contemporary issues – above all the transformations of rural life following the political transition. Such works include Nem mindenki Szabó Géza ám (You Have to Be Born Géza Szabó, 1998), Árva Tésa (lit. Orphan Tésa, 2000), Bánya utca (Bánya Street, 2005), and Zsákfalu – avagy amíg a temető eléri a postát (Dead-End Village, or Until the Cemetery Reaches the Post Office, 2006) – each of which is also a personal confession.
The protagonist of You Have to Be Born Géza Szabó [15] is a clear-thinking, articulate peasant farmer who also serves as an authentic chronicler of the changes that have taken place in the rural world – the hopes, initiatives and disappointments that followed the political transition of 1989–90 [the collapse of the state-socialist system in Hungary]. Spanning a decade, the film follows the transformations in the life of its central figure, who functions within his own village community as a kind of leader, a point of reference for others. He is a personality who radiates vitality despite every hardship and failure. His sober, peasant logic and lucid judgement make the conflicts inherent in rural existence tangible for the viewer as well.
Orphan Tésa is a classic work of film sociography, tracing the history of a steadily – though inexorably – dwindling settlement from the First World War onwards, when, following the Trianon decision [1920 peace treaty redrawing Hungary’s borders after World War I], it became a border village. The film is characterised by precise observation, a sensitive approach, and an editing style focused resolutely on what is essential. One especially moving moment occurs when an elderly participant guides the crew at the war memorial, evoking the tragic fates of people he once knew personally. In the way he recounts the circumstances of their deaths, not only the village in the Börzsöny mountains comes alive, but also the past hundred years of Hungary itself.
Bánya Street leads the viewer into a landscape of almost inhuman deprivation. Kismuncsel, near Deva [Hungarian: Déva: town with a significant Hungarian ethnic minority in Transylvania, present-day Romania], was once home to 2,700 people, but after the political transition the mine [Hungarian: bánya] was closed, the settlement rapidly emptied, and it fell into ruin. In the cemetery, more people now rest – Romanians and Hungarians, at last in complete peace – than those who still inhabit the town built as a typical socialist workers’ settlement. At the time the film was made, the ghost town was home to only some fifty inhabitants, living from day to day, trying to survive by dismantling the abandoned, derelict buildings. Brick by brick, they dismantle the former framework of their dignified, working lives. Reduced to fragments, they attempt to turn into money what was once a home, a cinema, a cultural centre, a courthouse, a human environment. They have no hope of a more humane existence: it is poverty itself that holds them prisoner for life.
In Buglya’s films, however, a positive gesture closing the events is always important – the presence of hope, even of joy in life. Even Bánya Street, which portrays people crushed by extreme poverty, is able to become a symbol of survival, of an irrepressible will to live, when the commuting teacher at the merged village school describes how, at the end of the school day, the children run home, how much they enjoy the freedom of running, the sheer freedom of being alive.
Nowhere is this life-knowledge-based, deep-seated optimism more evident than in his most personal work, shot entirely from a subjective camera position: Dead-End Village, completed in 2006 and covering a timespan of a decade. After buying a house in the small village of Perőcsény in the Börzsöny Mountains, it became the director’s second home. He is bound to those who live there by a personal, intimate and friendly relationship, and it is precisely this relationship that becomes the true subject of his film, which presents a loose sequence of minor and major events from the life of the village. It is not only his relationship to the original inhabitants, or theirs to the filmmaker who has moved in, but the very reality of living together, of moving through life together. Home – the state of being at home. A noble word, perhaps, but here it is apposite: the homeland.
This village, too, is ageing, yet there are newcomers – not only intellectuals from Budapest, but also Dutch settlers. Tradition and custom are fading, yet there are enthusiastic – and young – local patriots for whom preserving the traces of the old way of life is a matter of the heart. The village lies relatively far from the cities, yet on village day a local resident projects slides showing how he climbed Kilimanjaro. Czech-like charm and vulnerability mingle with heart-wrenching scenes of life (an old man who has been forced to sell his cows visits them, and, in tears, rejoices to see how well they are cared for by their new owner). No drama, no sharpened conflict. Only the passing of time, and a calm, forgiving contemplation of that passing. This beautifully shot, intimate work stands as one of Sándor Buglya’s most outstanding films.
Producerial work
In 1987 the so-called MAFILM’s Second Production Site separated from the Róna utcai Filmgyár (lit. Róna Street Film Factory). This became MOVI [16]. Within it operated the HDF (Híradó- és Dokumentumfilm Stúdió [Hungarian News and Documentary Film Studio]), and Sándor Buglya became its artistic director (alongside studio head Tamás Fehéri). The Fórum Film Studio, specialising primarily in documentary production, was founded here in foundation form by the filmmakers working at the studio. In effect, this was where Buglya’s career as a producer began. He midwifed the creation of numerous films [17]. In the dramaturgical work he supervised, he was able to draw on the capacity for synthesis he had preserved from his amateur-film past, honed during jury work. This calm, considered attitude – from which problems were viewed at a slight distance – also proved beneficial in teaching, and above all for his students.
The 1989–90 political transition also reshaped the institutional structures of film production. As elsewhere in the country, there was an illusion that genuine self-organisation could resolve existing problems and create a viable professional public sphere. At the relevant meetings and within the organisations formed at the time, Buglya was not only present: he was often the one who summarised the demands and the necessary steps. Together with others from the profession, he fought to save the disintegrating workshops. It later became clear, however, that self-organisation and authenticity were merely secondary considerations behind purely material interests [18]. Within a few years, the bases of Hungarian film production not only failed to renew themselves: the various MAFILM sites and MOVI itself ceased to exist. The new structures that arose on the ruins left creators even more vulnerable than before.
Buglya clearly perceived the new challenges documentary filmmakers would have to face. He was among the first to adapt video for filmmaking purposes, to teach its use, and, likewise, among the first to take account of the growing importance of video technology and the expanding role of television. Already in the 1980s he wrote a long series of articles entitled Kreatív video (lit. Creative Video), which for a long time served as the “Bible” of students attending video courses.
He was himself part of the team that created Duna Televízió (Duna Television) [19]. Duna TV was a unique and pioneering enterprise, since previously – in effect since Trianon – Hungarians living beyond the borders had had no daily, domestically accessible connection to Hungarian culture or public life, something this channel provided from its launch. It was also pioneering in that it was the first Hungarian broadcaster to transmit via satellite.
Originally, as early as 1990, the MOVI leadership and its intellectual circle – under director András Péterffy – planned a cassette-distribution television. This involved, in semi-illegal fashion, the sending of VHS tapes beyond the borders [20]. Soon, however, the possibility of satellite broadcasting arose, and the proposal for this was also formulated at MOVI. The channel was established with the support of Prime Minister József Antall [first democratically elected Hungarian prime minister after 1989] and with the founding involvement of the Magyarok Világszövetsége (World Federation of Hungarians). The technical preparations, the test broadcasts, and the accelerated training course for announcers – largely recruited from beyond the borders – were organised at MOVI. At the newly launched television station, the “form teacher” of the announcers for a long time was Sándor Buglya, who in fact also retired from Duna Television in 2007.
With the exception of the test transmissions, Duna Television did not continue to operate at MOVI, nor was it run by MOVI specialists, leaving a bitter taste among those who had conceived the channel but were then excluded from its management. At MOVI, however – precisely as a consequence of this, in 1994 – the Dunatáj Alapítvány (lit. Duna Landscape Foundation) was established. After the dissolution of MOVI, it rented an office in the Duna TV building, in order to operate independently, though in coordination with the channel. Within the grant-based system of Hungarian film production that emerged in the 1990s, Dunatáj, under Buglya’s leadership, became one of the most successful workshops. Approximately fifty creators, regularly involved in the foundation’s productions, passed through it. The number of completed films – predominantly documentaries – reached nearly four hundred.
Its existence, however, was one of perpetual tightrope-walking. “With the political transition, ministerial funding ceased. Previously we were given a certain framework, which the studio management distributed (…) It could happen that a film was launched but failed, did not succeed. Or it could not be shot because circumstances changed so much; in that case the studio management could write it off as so-called ‘tolerated scrap’. Once the grant system was introduced, this possibility automatically disappeared. If, for example, a project does not materialise, the awarded money has to be paid back. From then on, the role of the leaders changed. There were also several occasions when I had to finish someone else’s film because the person in question gave up the struggle. The workshop, however, could not afford to fail with a grant, because it would have excluded itself from further opportunities. This is a peculiarly Hungarian slice of the producer’s role.” [21]
Teaching activity
Even in his amateur filmmaking years, discussions following screenings, along with the analysis and evaluation of works in progress and completed films, played an important role in Sándor Buglya’s life. He was frequently invited to serve as a juror at festivals in Hungary and abroad. When, in 1980, he received a teaching scholarship at the Babelsberg College of Film and Television in the German Democratic Republic, he developed a course entitled ‘visual language’, whose primary aim was to teach cinematic ways of thinking. From 1983, for twenty years, he taught this subject at the Academy of Film Arts, Budapest, first in two classes specialising in short films, then in the departments of film theory and editing, and later in courses launched within the framework of cooperation with Babeș–Bolyai University.
Although Buglya built an important body of work as both documentary filmmaker and producer, it is perhaps in pedagogy that he was able to exert his greatest influence. Today, the majority of professionals working in this field in Hungary and across the Carpathian Basin have, in one form or another, been his students. He taught on basic and intermediate courses, in the communication and media departments of colleges and universities, and within international institutions. For a quarter of a century, he taught regularly on film courses in Austria and Germany. Parallel with his work at the Academy of Film Arts, he lectured at the Department of Media Studies of the University of Klagenfurt [22], in Budapest at OPAKFI [23], and later taught in Târgu Mureș [Hungarian: Marosvásárhely, an important cultural, educational and intellectual centre for the Hungarian minority in the region] at the communication department of Sapientia Erdélyi Magyar Tudományegyetem (Sapientia – Hungarian University of Transylvania), as well as in Cluj-Napoca [Hungarian: Kolozsvár, a historic Transylvanian city and key centre of Hungarian culture and higher education] at the photography–film–media specialisation of Sapientia University. Perhaps this latter proved to be the most significant of all, since the professional structure and direction of the film training there are primarily associated with his name. From 2003 onwards, Buglya defined the methodology of the programme, invited instructors, and played a major part in establishing an independent teaching staff and in shaping the high-quality practical training that is now internationally recognised. He taught directing, cinematography, producing, screenwriting and dramaturgy, and even today he continues to teach BA and MA students on four intensive days every month. It can be stated that the number of his students in both theory and practice (this is no exaggeration) runs into the thousands.
On Buglya’s 70th birthday, Sándor Sára [Hungarian cinematographer and film director] said: “What we need today, too, are genuine teachers of the people – people like Sándor Buglya.”
This extraordinarily rich, multi-faceted and in many fields highly successful life work is by no means over. Buglya Sándor is still fully active, leading an energetic life, and the significance of his role in contemporary Hungarian film culture is unquestionable. In the spring of 2007, in Perőcsény, at the very filming location, his film Dead-End Village was also screened. Afterwards, he initiated the reconstruction of one of the village’s old peasant houses, in which he took on an organisational and supervisory role. On 23 October, the beautifully restored ‘tájház’ [local heritage house] was handed over to the community, and in the years that followed further and further parts of the building complex were renovated. The local municipality awarded its organiser the title of Honorary Citizen of Perőcsény. In 2014, the building complex received the UNESCO ICOMOS Award for exemplary monument restoration.
[2016]
[1] The village is now part of Tiszakécske.
[2] He regularly attended screenings at the Filmmúzeum [Budapest art-house cinema specialising in classic and international films], where he watched and analysed a vast number of films. Even while still at secondary school, he attended the courses of Károly Nemes [Hungarian film aesthete and critic] at the TIT József Attila Szabadegyetem (József Attila Open University).
[3] From 1989 onwards, at Buglya’s own initiative, the organisation adopted the name Magyar Független Film és Video Szövetség (lit. Hungarian Independent Film and Video Association), which more accurately reflects both the aims of the organisation and those of its membership, since, in addition to independence from external support, it expresses a conscious distancing from both commercialisation and political influence.
[4] Union Internationale du Cinéma non Professionnel
[5] By way of a brief “taste”, some of the names involved include: István Pásztor, Tamás Fehér, Lajos Koltai, András Jeles, Sándor Kardos, the Gulyás brothers [Gábor and Gyula], András Péterffy, András Matkócsik, Lóránt Mertz, István Tényi, János Xantus, Ágnes Háy, Péter Tímár, Gábor Balog…
[6] In Népművelő a felvevőgéppel (lit. Folk Educator with a Camera, 2010), Buglya paid tribute to his friend István Kiss [Hungarian amateur filmmaker], who developed his talent through amateur film. The work also evokes an attitude towards filmmaking that had not yet conceived of it as an individualistic activity. See the short review at: http://www.filmtett.ro/cikk/2984/a-szovjet-levelezopajtas-nepmuvelo-a-felvevogeppel-allah-minden-napjan-szaladnak-a-lovak-a-nyolcak-nyomaban-last-call-dresden-dolls (last accessed 21 November 2025)
[7] Buglya Sándor is himself seeking to bring these works back into public view through a number of forums. One example is his ongoing screening series Mozi a Vigadóban (lit. Cinema at the Vigadó), in which several of these films have been presented.
[8] Ágnes Kulics later edited several hundred films and subsequently became one of the senior staff members of Duna Televízió (Duna Television).
[9] In the class of György Illés [Hungarian cinematographer and influential teacher], his fellow students included István Bánhegyi, Zsolt Haraszti, Olivér Hollós, Ferenc Máriássy, Tibor Máthé, András Péterffy and Péter Vékás.
[10] György Pálos – György Czabán: Országalma (Orb, 1998);
György Czabán: Feri és az édes élet (Frankie and the Delicious Life, co-screenwriter, 2001);
György Pálos: Sztornó (lit. Cancelled, 2006).
[11] Minden tízedik (lit. Every Tenth One, 1983 – Varna, Silver Prize) deals with the causes of premature birth. The short film Égési sérülés esetén (lit. In Case of Burns, 1978), about the treatment of burn injuries, was, in a peculiar twist, screened in cinemas before the disaster film The Towering Inferno, set in a skyscraper consumed by flames.
[12] The film won Third Prize at the 1980 International Film Festival of Fine Arts [today Alexandre Trauner ART/FILM Fesztivál (ATAFF), Szolnok, Hungary]
[13] Co-director: Lajos Sylvester
[14] Co-director: Lajos Sylvester
[15] Co-director: Dietmar Herbert
[16] The history of the Magyar Mozi- és Videófilmgyár (lit. Hungarian Movie and Video Film Factory, MOVI) is complex. In essence, it sought to operate as a legitimate film-production company but was liquidated in 1995, on the grounds of substantial accumulated debt, and its assets were sold. A significant part of its archive material was destroyed, and even the building complex itself was demolished. No salt was scattered on the site – today a bus terminal stands there.
[17] Perhaps the most successful of these was the work Egyszer volt, hol nem volt (Once Upon a Time) by Buglya’s former student Zsuzsa Böszörményi, which in 1991 won the so-called ‘student Oscar’ – the Student Academy Award – in the category of Best Foreign Film.
[18] The dismantling of MAFILM is a typical story of the period of political transition, the details of which cannot be explored here. It should nevertheless be noted that in this case not only the aims but also the manner of implementation lacked even basic common sense, and that, in reality, there were no genuine beneficiaries of the frantic activity that ruined the functioning structures of Hungarian film production.
[19] It was Buglya who advocated the name Duna Televízió instead of the originally proposed Hungária TV, a title that would most likely have irritated the neighbouring countries more than was desirable.
[20] In a similar way, in the years preceding the political transition, materials produced by Fekete Doboz (lit. Black Box – underground video collective of the 1980s) circulated in Hungary. While this group functioned as a kind of video journal, the envisaged quasi-television would have delivered complete programmes to the emerging cable television networks of Hungarian-inhabited regions.
[21] Klára Barabás: Poros öltöny – Beszélgetés Buglya Sándor producerrel (lit. Dusty Suit – A Conversation with Producer Sándor Buglya), Filmkultúra
[22] Alpen Adria Universität – Klagenfurt, Medienwissenschaftliche Fakultät
[23] Optikai, Akusztikai és Filmtechnikai Egyesület (Scientific Society for Optics, Acoustics, Motion Pictures and Theatre Technology)