István Jelenczki is an ‘independent intellectual’ (Tóth 2003i), an artist in the noblest sense of the word, who was socialised in deep poverty in the so-called ‘Chicago district’ of Budapest’s Erzsébetváros, near Garay Square. A child of a plumber and a cleaner, he nevertheless reached, through autodidactic means, a point where he is able, through his works, to speak about the most fundamental questions of life and death, nation and individual, at the highest aesthetic level. His artistic interests unfolded through photography, drawing and montage, yet already during his secondary school years he turned towards filmmaking. He developed his negatives and paper photographs himself, and even his first 8 mm films were processed by him at home. His career embodies all the beauty and difficulty of the independent intellectual artist. His uncompromising critical attitude and his humanism imbued with sacral depth did not make him the favourite of any ideological or political side. Power, and any of its cultural-patronage extensions, did not indulge Jelenczki either before or after the regime change [the Hungarian transition from state socialism to parliamentary democracy in 1989–90]. He waited eight years at the Balázs Béla Studio to be able to make his first ‘professional’ or so-called ‘semi-professional’ film, Emlékezés az emberre (lit. Remembrance of Humanity, 1989–1990) (Jelenczki 2003: 45). The film industry also acknowledged him only slowly and reluctantly. For his next two films made at the BBS, Haláljog I–II. (lit. The Right to Die I–II.) and Elvesztünk (lit. We Are Lost), he received the Directors’ Special Prize at the 25th Hungarian Film Review in 1994. Yet even this award did not allow immediate entry into the circle of supported creators. For a long time he financed his films from his own savings, and later in a few cases, including Hagyaték (lit. Legacy, 2001), his work on Attila József, with the help of friends and civil supporters.
His perseverance is indicated by the fact that he submitted several grant applications every year, some unchanged, others revised, over many years. He received financing for certain plans, such as his portrait film of the astronomer Imre Izsák (1998), yet even in the 2000s the creation of individual films required his and his wife’s ingenuity as producers. The struggle caused by production difficulties is not visible in the quality of the films, on the contrary: paradoxically, it partly contributed to the crystallisation of his autonomous artistic mode of expression. Through his works, Jelenczki consistently sought and represented truth.
Intellectual and philosophical foundations
Interpreters of Jelenczki’s work often highlight death as a central motif. This observation is valid, yet it must be nuanced by examining the perspectives through which the artist processes this motif and the path he has followed with this motif in his works. It is important to know that Jelenczki had a difficult life, as he himself puts it: “I did not grow up in an ideal family environment…” (Jelenczki 2003: 42). Several elements of his life recall that of Attila József: the working-class deep poverty of Erzsébetváros, the incomprehension faced by a first-generation intellectual, and more. It is no coincidence that he made several films about the life and work of one of the most significant poets of the twentieth century. “As a small child I went through several serious illnesses, when my parents were told to prepare for the worst, because they could no longer help me” (ibid.). Thus, from a very young age he was forced to confront the idea of death and transience. This inspired his first photographic series, made of an elderly person in the minutes following their death, which also formed the material of his first exhibition. The motif of death has remained a prominent theme in his works of fine arts, including drawings, photographs and montages. Jelenczki, however, moved from death, through philosophical and aesthetic depths, towards life. Életünk ikercsillaga a Halál (lit. Death, the Twin Star of Our Life, 2003) is the title of his volume collecting poetic writings. According to the message of his works, the essence of life can be understood only with an awareness of our passing, in its shadow, by confronting physical death. People of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, especially those living in cities, have become detached from the natural and divine reality of life, and experience existence in some form of self-deception, whether through careless irresponsibility or total controllability. A ‘worthy life’, however, presupposes a ‘worthy death’, and vice versa. “We have lost the once-known and practised culture of creation, dying, death and mourning because we have lost, and are losing, the culture of our lives”, he writes in the cited book (ibid.: 5).
Since “the absence of a culture of life is the absence of a culture of death” (ibid.: 47), this can be restored most authentically by art, because “art, ever since it has existed, has always been a sacral rite of initiation” (ibid.: 49). The artist, as a “shaman, is a mediator between the underworld and worldly powers, between the cosmos and God” (ibid.: 49), and can help both himself and others to regain “the possibility of living their personal lives” (ibid.: 50).
As the encounter with death has a sacral character even for the non-believer, the manner of exiting life can determine the answers given to the philosophical, aesthetic and ethical questions of art. This applies, for example, to survival and permanence in all categories. “There is a law. The natural law of God, the divine law of Nature. No one can be exempted from this law, and no one can exempt themselves. Death begins with life” (ibid.: 9). This law, the only one that can be regarded as absolutely certain, also warns us in Jelenczki’s films and poetic writings that there exists a principle beyond and above humanity, which cannot be changed, only accepted and understood. Several modern philosophies no longer urge the artist to understand life, but to change it. They attribute creative power to humans, but while humans can be creative, they cannot create something out of nothing. From this arises, in Jelenczki’s poetics, respect for God and the created world, the recognition and understanding of laws, and the search for and restoration of truth. The path he takes from fear of death to respect for and service of life, and to the search for truth, is therefore paradoxical, controversial only in appearance. It presupposes that truth exists and that it must ‘simply’ be sought, understood and communicated to others in an appropriate way. This search for truth determined his main genre, the artistically conceived documentary film, and beyond the epistemological examination of life and death, led to the undertaking of the existential issues of individuals, communities and the nation. Through this path, Jelenczki moves from depicting the fate of long-term care patients in hospital wards abandoned by their families (Elvesztünk (lit. We are Lost), 1993), or from examining the theoretical and practical questions of euthanasia (Haláljog (lit. The Right to Die), 1993), through portraits of scientists and artists such as Lajos Papp, Alaine Polcz, Miklós Mészöly, Imre Izsák, Attila József and Gyula László, to a precise, nuanced and vivid presentation of the history of 1956 („Népek Krisztusa, Magyarország” (lit. “Christ of the Nations, Hungary”) 1956 I–IV., 2006), the exposure of those who plundered the national wealth (Háború a nemzet ellen (lit. War Against the Nation), 2009), and the presentation of the Hungarian historical constitution (Égi élő igazság – A Szent Korona misztériuma és tana (lit. Heavenly Living Truth – The Mystery and the Doctrine of the Holy Crown), 2007–2008).
Style
Jelenczki’s style as a fine artist, photographer and film director is determined by the philosophy of death and life, and by the principles that arise from it. As already mentioned, his fundamental genre is the artistic documentary film. In this field, even if not unique, he is one of the most significant directors. His stylistic features are universal, yet distinctive and emphatic, and they can be clearly distinguished from the characteristics of other, similar works.
Both content and aesthetics are dual in nature: there is miracle and mystery in the reality to be understood, in the mode of representation, in visual depiction and in evocation. If we take André Bazin’s categories, Jelenczki believes both in the image and in reality. He seeks to grasp everything, everything “that is visible, and that is not” (ibid.: 35). Through the external image he strives to approach a secret, inner image which, although it remains a mystery and is entirely unattainable, can nonetheless be approached and must be approached: “Art is prayer. An attempt at dialogue with mystery, with the possible impossible. This dialogue is an attempt at contact. A bridge to Mystery, to God, to the power of nature. A bridge that leads us to the preserved image that lies within us” (ibid.: 35). Jelenczki realises the abstraction-based generation of meaning in the image (Lotman 1977: 14), and gets close to the sacral, divine Mystery.
In practical terms, this means that his works embody respect for the Creator and the created world, and within that for matter, for facts and above all for the human being. Although filmmaking is not a profession he learned through formal institutional training, Jelenczki is familiar with and applies the basic toolkit of cinema and documentary film. He gives voice to subjects, witnesses and experts, uses archival photographs and footage, visits original locations with his camera, and records documents of evidential value and illustrative force. In his case, particular care is taken in the selection of the people who speak, who always offer more of themselves in front of his camera than a mere subject, witness or expert would. As we know, style is the man. The credibility of those who speak is enhanced equally by the selection itself, by the topic, and by the manner of presentation, for example the use of close-ups or wide shots where appropriate.
Jelenczki makes use of the stylistic elements of the documentary film in a manner that is professionally grounded yet unmistakably individual. Already in his early professional or semi-professional films produced at the Balázs Béla Studio, as well as in the documentary works that were awarded the Directors’ Special Prize at the 1994 Hungarian Film Review, one can observe the consistent, effective and artistic application of the following formal features: refocusing; close-ups and macro shots; subjective camera; the tracking of characters; effective accompanying music, both quoted and original; natural and artificial lighting; dissolves; superimpositions; unity and contrast, for example in the relationship between image and music or between images; montage or installation; as well as sequences, acceleration and deceleration.
These are no longer all part of the basic toolkit of the documentary film. There are certain stylistic elements which, even if not entirely Jelenczki’s own inventions, become strong, distinctive and readily recognisable features of style in his work. Among these, the use of dissolves, superimpositions, as well as montages, installations and sequences deserves particular emphasis, and in most cases these are combined with the powerful atmosphere-creating force of music. Dissolves and superimpositions, even without any other kind of modification of the recorded image, create visual figures and tropes that generate new, unique meanings. The superimposition of a human face and a machine, for example a dialysis device, or of the Holy Crown and a characteristic Hungarian landscape, produces metaphorical or metonymic relations and, beyond these, symbolic correspondences through the sensory construction of additional meanings, drawing ever closer to the previously mentioned Mystery.
Montages, installations and sequences, similarly to dissolves and superimpositions, are not ends in themselves as stylistic devices, but generate meanings that could not be constructed in any other way. For example, in his film Haláljog (lit. Right to Die) (1993) individual utterances and textual blocks are separated by montage sequences enriched with accompanying music. These, however, are not merely structuring elements, as they evoke the visions that one sees, or may see, during near-death experiences. Such dense audiovisual material can bring one very close to understanding, or more precisely to experiencing, the state of mind of terminally ill patients.
Superimpositions and real objects, as well as abstract patches, enlarged details and, at times, drawn diagrams, represent Jelenczki’s artistic engagement with multiple genres. His fine art works have compositional elements similar to those found in the parallel sections of his films. Abstract colour patches and lines are just as capable of eliciting direct emotional effects as they are in the films, and the technique of superimposition is also very frequent in his photographic series. Certain graphic and photographic series can likewise be regarded as belonging to the relationship between fine art and film, or to a transitional genre, as they present processes through the modification of a few elements, much like the moving image.
The adequate use of accompanying music is also a part of the style. In Jelenczki’s films this accompanying music, where necessary, blends into the overall image and sound effect, while at other times it is expressive, even surpassing the image itself. For the majority of the director’s films, the music was composed by László Hortobágyi. This accompanying music is so complex and professionally conceived that it would merit a separate analysis. It can, however, be stated that it fuses the layers of Hungarian national traditional music with progressive art music, at times with rock music, at others with electronic sound. The interweaving of these layers generates tension without the harshness of eclecticism. Ultimately, it creates the impression that it is possible to be innovative and youthful, as well as expressive, while preserving traditional elements. Beyond designating the composer most suited to the given artistic task, the director’s merit lies in the selection of the basic material, such as folk songs, ballads and motifs, the definition of fundamental principles of sound, and the invitation of further contributing artists, including singers.
The grouping of the works
The oeuvre forms an organic unity, yet within it certain artistic fields, genres and thematic interrelations can be distinguished. Jelenczki’s works include fine art pieces, books and films. A fourth category is the activity he pursues as a public figure and organiser. I mention this because, even if we consider the phenomenon solely in relation to his films, Jelenczki also contributes, as a co-organiser or principal organiser of civic initiatives, to turning the represented theme into a communal event. The most important manifestations of this endeavour are the events Ima Magyarországért (lit. Prayer for Hungary) held in 2006 and 2009 at Heroes’ Square, and the oath-taking before the Holy Crown in 2007 in the Parliament building. All three events were also processed by him in documentary films.
This overview primarily aims to present the documentary films in the oeuvre, but it is also important to briefly mention related works. Printed catalogues and the artist’s own website (http://www.jelenczki.hu/) provide ample information on Jelenczki’s fine art activity. Group and solo exhibitions from 1975 through to the 2000s show a distinctive arc of change in the artist’s style. After the early exhibitions organised at the University of Technology, the works, new series and selections were later on display at the Budapest Gallery and the Ernst Museum as well. More evaluative articles were written about Jelenczki’s exhibitions, already in the 1970s, than about his early films.
In Jelenczki’s case, the creative process of fine art gradually became more and more intertwined with filmmaking, both thematically and technically. The motif of transience and death was dominant in the medium of both art forms and has remained so. The techniques of superimposition and montage expanded within his toolkit in parallel in the two disciplines. In the films, the aesthetic appeal of still images, dissolves, superimpositions, and static as well as moving-image montages increased with technological developments, for example with the spread of digital recording and the increase in image resolution.
Books are important because they illuminate the interconnections and conceptual foundations of the oeuvre. Jelenczki treated death not merely as a motif, but from the age of eighteen he consciously began to engage with thanatology (Jelenczki 2003: 43). He not only made the first films about long-term care patients and the right to die, that is euthanasia, but was also the initiator and co-editor of a book addressing numerous aspects of death, Mauzóleum (Mausoleum) (1987). This volume also included two short texts by him and his photographs as illustrations. He is likewise credited as co-editor and co-author of the commemorative volume on the astronomer Imre Izsák, A Hold túlsó oldalán (lit. On the Far Side of the Moon), which was published under the same title and at the same time as his documentary film. From the perspective of surveying and understanding the oeuvre, the most important book is Életünk ikercsillaga a Halál (lit. Death, the Twin Star of Our Life) (2003). This mixed-genre volume contains short essays, concise and declarative poems, short stories, interviews, and a literary screenplay, which together define the intellectual and aesthetic foundations of Jelenczki’s poetics.
The films can be divided into five major groups. The first focuses on the theme of death, and is built around questions concerning transience, vulnerability in the process of dying, and the right to die. This group includes his early amateur films, as well as Elvesztünk (lit. We Are Lost), made at the Balázs Béla Studio and awarded in 1994, and Haláljog (lit. Right to Die). Since then, no documentary film of such thoroughness and authenticity has been made in Hungary either about long-term care patients or about euthanasia. The films were discussed after the Film Review by the film aesthete Gábor Gelencsér (Gelencsér 1994: 119–121), with an analysis of style. The assessment of these works, even if delayed by several years, represented for Jelenczki, as a film director, the possibility of continuation.
The second major group consists of a series of portrait films about the work of scientists and artists. Among these are more simply executed works, such as the interview made with Miklós Mészöly, who, shortly before his seventy-fifth birthday, speaks about art, life and death on his long-unvisited small vineyard estate near Szekszárd. The portrait film about Imre Izsák is also traditional in style, but it is important in that it outlines the life path of an astronomer who is not particularly well known, yet who is regarded by the international professional community as significant and who died young. Imre Izsák died in Paris in 1965 under unclear circumstances. Jelenczki wished to resolve the mystery of the death of the celestial mechanician and astronomer, but the film’s limited budget and the classification of archival files did not make this possible.
Death is a prominent theme in all of Jelenczki’s films, and thus also in his portrait films. All of his subjects, whom he presented or interviewed, were seriously engaged with, or confronted, death. The cardiac surgeon Lajos Papp saved numerous lives through his heart operations, and this struggle is presented in the portrait film made about him, A hatalom cinizmusa – Papp Lajos professzor szívútja (lit. The Cynicism of Power – Professor Lajos Papp’s Journey of the Heart, 1992–2010). The film reveals that the struggle to save lives was made more difficult for the world-renowned doctor, who possessed a strong sense of mission, even by measures attributed to certain political powers operating in the background. The psychologist Alaine Polcz was an expert in thanatology and a practising therapist, and Jelenczki also made an interview film with her, Úton a halállal I–II. (lit. On the Road with Death I–II., 1994–1997). It was probably through her that the director also reached Alaine’s spouse, Miklós Mészöly. In the essayistic portrait film ‘Megbocsáthatatlanul szeretem ezt a földet’ (lit. ‘I Unforgivably Love This Land’, 1996), Mészöly articulates a summation of his own life and the act of facing his own passing.
Attila József’s relationship to death is articulated in many of his poems and writings; his tragic death, whether accident or suicide, remains to this day an unresolved and unresolvable fact (Eszmélet után I–IV. Elégia József Attiláról (lit. After ‘Consciousness’ I–IV. Elegy on Attila József), 2001–2004). The archaeologist Professor Gyula László, known as the originator and proponent of the theory of dual or multiple Hungarian conquests, also investigated the imprints of life preserved in the cemeteries of earlier periods (‘Áldom a Teremtőt’ I–II. Portréfilm László Gyuláról (lit. ‘I Bless the Creator’ I–II. Portrait Film on Gyula László), 2014–2015). Gyula László was not a person who engaged psychologically with transience, yet at the end of the portrait film the director quotes an interview passage from him that articulates anxiety.
Among Jelenczki’s most important portrait films, and indeed among his most significant films overall, are the works devoted to Attila József and to the life path of Gyula László. This is partly because they present individuals of outstanding talent, and partly because they are substantial undertakings in terms of their scope, comprising four and two parts respectively. Thirdly, they place the oeuvres in a new light, through a novel interpretation of Attila József’s religious and nationally committed poetry, and through the presentation of Gyula László’s fine art oeuvre. Finally, because they deal with artistic oeuvres, the director was able to employ numerous creative audiovisual solutions, thereby bringing to fulfilment the genre and the toolkit of the artistic documentary film (Deák-Sárosi 2015).
Related to the portrait films, yet constituting an independent category, is the genre of verse films, or more precisely film poems. Jelenczki’s first film made at the Balázs Béla Studio, shot on 16 mm, can also be placed in this category. Beneath the verse quotations in Emlékezés az emberre (lit. Remembrance of Humanity) (1989), one sees “[s]uperimposed images of a living being on the verge of extinction, the human being. Of life and death. Of birth and the mortuary. Of fires and waters.” This is how the archival documents summarise the film, to which one may add that the superimposed images, much like the poetic texts of human language, are rich in figures and metaphors that generate nuanced, individual meanings. In this way the verse film becomes a film poem. Two further works by Jelenczki connected to the poetry of Attila József are also film poems, Hagyaték – Emlékezés József Attilára (lit. Legacy – Remembrance of Attila József) (2001), and „…Por és Istenpor vagyunk…” (lit. ‘…We Are Dust and God’s Dust…’) (2003–2011). In these films the selections of poems are thematic, in the latter Attila József’s religious poetry is featured. The poems are recited by the actor Péter Simon, who conveys the words of the great poet with flawless diction and genuine spiritual intensity. It should be added that Jelenczki selects not only his interview subjects with unerring sensitivity, but also the contributing and collaborating artists. All of them are among the finest practitioners in their profession, art or field. Without them, none of his films would be the same, not without Péter Simon, nor for example without Dóra Rózsa Benkő, whose singing we can hear in several films.
Jelenczki is clearly attached to the poetry of Attila József and to its presentation. This, however, does not entail stylistic limitations. Nothing demonstrates his broad artistic horizon more clearly than the fact that he also made a film poem from the works of Mihály Babits, whose ars poetica differs significantly from that of Attila József and who, in a certain sense, regarded the younger poet as his rival. Holt próféta a hegyen (lit. Dead Prophet on the Mountain) (2008), as its subtitle indicates (Válogatás Babits Mihály esztergomi Előhegyen írt verseiből (Selection from the Poems Written by Mihály Babits on the Előhegy in Esztergom)), concentrates on a narrow segment of the oeuvre and unfolds it through the audiovisual means of the moving image. The reciter of Holt próféta a hegyen is also Péter Simon, and Jelenczki composes such images together with the sound material that perhaps not even those who have often visited the Esztergom Előhegy have seen. Every vision unfolds from the poet’s perspective, and the director’s sensitive camera shows what Babits may have seen, imagined or felt, yet in a manner never seen before, through a cinematic eye positioned in an intermediate space between Babits and the viewer.
The next group is historical documentary films. Four of these are particularly important to highlight. „Népek Krisztusa, Magyarország” 1956 I–IV. (lit. ‘Christ of Nations, Hungary’ 1956 I–IV.) (2006) is one of the finest documentary films about the popular uprising, revolution and war of independence of 1956. As one perceptive critic has emphasised, beyond providing a precise and nuanced picture of 1956 through explanations by freedom fighters, eyewitnesses, historians and experts, and through presenting contemporary documents and film excerpts, the film also offers factual novelties (Sashegyi 2007). It places, for example, Imre Nagy in a different light, and recalls facts that are unknown or little known, such as the moment when Soviet tanks opened fire on ÁVH [State Protection Authority] officers who themselves were firing into the unarmed crowd. The documentary film on 1956 was later supplemented with a fifth part, „Tisztítótűz tetején álltunk” – Tóth Ilona drámája (lit. ‘We Stood on Top of a Purifying Fire’ – The Drama of Ilona Tóth) (2006–2008).
A seminal work within the oeuvre, and within the genre more generally, is Háború a nemzet ellen I–IV. – Az elrabolt nemzeti vagyon (lit. War against the Nation I–IV. – The Stolen National Wealth) (2009), which also belongs to the group of historical documentary films. With the assistance of experts, and by citing documents, in part also presenting them visually, the film demonstrates how, during and after the regime change, large parts of national wealth was siphoned off by certain international forces together with their domestic collaborators and facilitators. The film was screened in relatively few venues within the conventional cinema network, but through film clubs and other channels it reached a large number of viewers, who since then presumably possess far more information and intellectual value, and are better equipped to resist media manipulation than they were previously.
Also belonging to the group of historical documentary films is Égi élő igazság – A Szent Korona misztériuma és tana (lit. Heavenly Living Truth – The Mystery and Doctrine of the Holy Crown) (2007–2008). With the assistance of experts, including historians, legal scholars, goldsmiths and ‘researchers of the collective psyche’, the film presents the history and contemporary relevance of the Holy Crown and the Hungarian historical constitution. Jelenczki’s commitment is demonstrated by the fact that the film could be made at all in 2007 (!), and that, before the Holy Crown in the Parliament building, members of a group committed to the Hungarian nation were able to take an oath, recorded on camera, to the Holy Crown, to the Hungarian historical constitution, and to the restoration of national self-determination. The epilogue of the documentary film containing the oath was also widely disseminated on the internet by those sympathetic to the idea.
Drawing on recent history, Az igazság soha nem késő I–III. (lit. Truth Is Never Too Late I–III.) (2012–2013) recounts the story of the adoption, and subsequent invalidation, of an exceptionally important law. I quote the synopsis published in television programme guides, which speaks for itself: “The film focuses on the Zétényi–Takács justice law. On 4 November 1991 the National Assembly adopted by a large majority the act ‘on the prosecutability of serious crimes committed between 21 December 1944 and 2 May 1990 that were not prosecuted for political reasons’. Árpád Göncz submitted the adopted law to the Constitutional Court for preliminary norm control. On the basis of the judicial decision, the justice law never entered into force.”
The fifth group within the oeuvre consists of moving images documenting events organised in the spirit of national cohesion, in part by the director himself. These include the cinematic presentation of the silent, non-violent, cultural demonstrations organised under the title Ima Magyarországért (lit. Prayer for Hungary), held at Heroes’ Square in November 2006 and March 2009. Égi élő igazság (lit. Heavenly Living Truth) (2007) can also be placed in this category because of its long and significant epilogue. Also belonging here is the film made by the director together with his wife, the psychiatrist Annamária Zseni, ÖN-TÉR-KÉP I–II. A magyar nemzet lelkiállapota (lit. SELF–MAP I–II. The Psychological State of the Hungarian Nation) (2014–2016). This documentary film, using scientifically validated methods and procedures similar to those employed in family constellation sessions, evoked the interacting values and repressions present in the unconscious of the Hungarian nation. The premiere of the film took place on 28 May 2016 at the Uránia National Film Theatre before a full house, and the audience in the ceremonial hall received the psychologist’s work and its precise and vivid documentation with astonishment and appreciation.
In summary, it can be established that István Jelenczki is an outstanding representative of the artistically ambitious documentary film, an independent intellectual committed to the human being and to the Hungarian nation, who, as a fine artist, film director and photographer, represents high philosophical, ethical, spiritual and, not least, aesthetic values through his works of art.
[2016]