A Review of the Fifth Edition of First Cut

News A Review of the Fifth Edition of First Cut

5 July 2022

“It didn’t make any sense to get from place to place using the stairs this year, because the lift itself was an exhibition space, where, travelling between floors, one entered the nebulous, black-and-white world of Orsolya Orbán’s ‘Water’s Mirror’ photo exhibition. In front of the auditorium, the photos of Orsolya Salamon’s ‘Traditions in Modern Szék’ series testified to Szék’s rich cultural heritage while a laptop played audio highlighting the diligence and striving of the common Szék inhabitant,” begins Lehel Siklódi, a volunteer for the Filmtett paper, in his description of the fifth edition of the First Cut exhibition.

“Arriving at the fifth floor, we stepped into ‘Overdue,’ a project by Sándor Ráduly which combines colorful textures with religious motifs. Before we could reach the studio, we were met by Réka Kiss’s ‘Culture Cave,’ where, in a room filled with household objects and traditional clothes, a video clip played on an old-fashioned TV set. In the studio, the first-year masters’ students’ (Ágnes Anna Farkas, Edith Ferenczi, Dorottya Képíró, Mihály Kiss, Krisztián Mák, Márk Makkai, and Ákos Madarász) cyclical video installation, ‘We the Trompe-l’Oeil,’ played. A pair of lovers, their figures bent in absurd fashion, kiss in what appears to be a photograph, but which slowly dissolves into a painting. The painting then becomes a photograph once more, and so the process repeats itself ad-infinitum. By placing bean-bags right in front of the canvas, the creators of the infinite loop enticed us to stay and watch the inevitably recurrent art piece unfold until we could truly distill some meaning out of it. Also in the studio was Hunor Tóth’s ‘I’ve Been Here Before, but They Don’t Know Me,’ a photo exhibition that treated the photographer’s delicate reintroduction into the closed society of his hometown, which he returned to after having spent years at university.

“Before the film screenings, Péter Keresztes gave a presentation. Keresztes, who was a student in Sapientia’s first-ever film class, now works as a correspondent for Roman TV in Timisoara, and is the creator of the documentary ‘There’s No Good Way to Say Goodbye in Wartime,’ which won Prix CIRCOM’s award for films produced for Eastern European television. Keresztes works alone, which, as he explained, has its advantages when it comes to addressing sensitive topics. Interview subjects, for example, feel more comfortable opening up and ‘airing out their dirty laundry’ in the more intimate setting of a one-on-one interview where there is no attached staff present. He also talked about his efforts to present stories with as much authenticity and fidelity to the subject matter as possible. He told the story of a report he prepared on the homeless living around Budapest’s Gellert Hill, who, using the excess of the famous Gellert Thermal Bath’s water, created their own bath on the shores of the Danube. Keresztes, joining their company while preparing his report, even tried out their bath, reasoning that the only way to be true to their story was to establish a rapport in which they were equals.

“Albert Birtalan, a correspondent at Kolozsvár Radio, also spoke about Keresztes’s ‘There Is No Good Way to Say Goodbye in Wartime,’ while Andrea Virginas, Head of the Media Department, along with Csengele Mikola and Balázs Bodor, both final-year students, gave remarks on Keresztes’s work and presentation. Albert Birtalan’s speech can be found on Kolozsvár Radio’s website.

“Afterwards followed the much-awaited judging of the year’s best student-produced films, and, just as in festivals, a group of judges, i.e. the Media Studies professors, sat in order to determine a winner. The thematically and stylistically diverse lineup of films opened with Orsolya Orbán’s ‘Sweet Hours.’ Erika is cleaning an elderly man’s home, and, as she tucks small items away in her pockets, you feel that this isn’t the first time she’s done this, and that she could have more in life. While the old man overlooks these small thefts, Erika treads further into the depths of uncertainty. She only calls her mother when she needs money. She doesn’t talk to her siblings. A man many years her senior is courting her. A character in conflict with everyone, especially herself, Erika finally moves towards understanding that a ‘solution,’ if one can term it such, has been flitting about her all along, amongst the everyday, seemingly meaningless events that animate life.

“If anyone was curious about what it means to be a director, what an actor ought to be like, or how these two roles in the filmmaking world interact with each other, then Csengele Mikola’s colorful satire, ‘Finding Zoé,’ had the answers. Mikola lavishes her viewers with opulent shots of the film’s surreal events. The deliberately detailed set design and costumes speak to the creative vision at work in this film, which even finds time to have its protagonist put in a few words on the decisions they’re making.

“Those who didn’t get a chance to see Timothy Sós’s ‘Suborbital’ at the Transylvania International Film Festival were able to catch it at First Cut. It tells the story of a Catholic priest who is losing his vision, and is helped by one of his kindest pupils, Nora, whose life isn’t without its own difficulties. Nora recently lost her father, but, because she finds herself at odds with God, she doesn’t go to his funeral. The slow approach of the priest’s blindness, a death of sorts, touches the sympathetic youth. The priest’s dreamlike visions make manifest answers to his struggle in the form of rich, visual symbols––he sees a peacock striding about the church, a parson seduced by sirens, and the freed Orpheus singing about himself throughout the course of the film. Nora, of course, can’t do anything about the priest’s ever-increasing blindness: she simply sticks by her friend to help him with the transition into his new reality. By the end of the movie the priest is walking around with sunglasses, and, after the festival of visions has passed, the time has finally come for him to be master of his condition.

“‘Adél’ was also entered into the Transylvania International Film Festival, and it’s no marginal aside that it was also filmed at the Filmtett Workshop. Gergely Lukács’s film revolves around a disintegrating love-triangle, and has its actors discourse on male and female identity. Adél desires a lover like she has already had, but she must find them somewhere else now, so she flees. After playing around with some sheep, she asks for the flock’s shepherd’s hand in marriage, representing the relationship between love and one’s beloved.

“After a brief intermission, the second half of the screenings begins with ‘Strange Sunday,’ a film by Balázs Bodor. The film opens by giving information about WWII POWs who were declared dead, and, unbeknownst to any of their relatives, buried in empty coffins. With this opening, we thought we were in for a historical drama, but what followed is actually best characterized as a horror film. Following his missing brother’s funeral, Szilamér becomes obsessed with the idea of connecting with his dead brother’s spirit, and the unfortunate man loses himself between grief and the hope of a successful séance. Szilamér, finally unprepared for the possibility of such a meeting with the dead, meets his own death. The film’s message: the price of calling up the dead is steep, and not everyone is ready to pay it.

“Barbara Szabó brought us the night’s only adaptation of a literary work, ‘Smoke,’ which grew out of one of Kosztolány’s novels. The film focuses on the life of an author, who spends his days writing and smoking expensive cigars. However, when the man believes himself to be grievously ill, he immediately takes on a new life. Filled with an honest comedy, the story is familiar to all. In problematic or weighty moments, we reflect on our lives with a stern seriousness and plan to implement change, only to later fall back whence we came, where we may again fumble through the darkness.

“Kata Incze’s film, titled ‘Good Day, Kicsi’ takes on a family at the verge of falling apart. A mother refuses to see eye-to-eye with her son, and the two of them are incapable of communicating, which, according to his sister, stems from the family’s lack of a male role model. The single mother, hardly able to dream of a good life, slowly snaps under the constant pressure she feels. As the film progresses, the possibility of mending the situation grows more and more distant, unhelped by the insults screamed in each other's face. The little family disintegrates in front of our eyes, yet love was never exactly missing from the picture. Instead, they were found to undervalue the expression of their love for one another, while forgetting that their actions only served to block the paths through which love might be expressed.

“The final film screened was Márton Nagy’s comedy-infused vampire film, ‘How I Ignited My Girlfriend on Our Third Date.’ A young man, dispirited, has just botched another in a long line of failed catering interviews when he meets a vampire. Much to his surprise, he is able to sleep with her after one of their dates, but then he begins to observe strange, vampire-like behavior on her part. Believing that he too has been turned into a vampire, he adopts new habits, such as siphoning old ladies’ blood and avoiding sunlight, in order to reflect his changed status,” finishes Lehel Siklódi.