Life on the Hortobagy

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Audience Member Fleeing Nazi Germany and inspired by Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922), George Hoellering made his way to Hungary to capture for the first time on film the lives of the herdsman and peasants on the great plains which had persisted barely changed for a millennia. Having won their trust by riding a bucking bronco, Hoellering and his crew filmed over the course of two summers and assembled a cast from the people themselves. Mixing documentary with fictional narrative, Lajtha's stirring score with traditional folk song, and with occasional almost surreal sequences - horses look on mournfully as if they somehow know the days of the csikós are numbered - the film follows the story of an elderly widow makes a long journey to see her former sweetheart before she dies, a young girl who opposes her father's wish to marry her off to a "conceited fool" and a young boy who idolises the engineer of a gas drill at the edge of the territory as the looming presence of machines begin to cast their shadow over the land and with it the csikós way of life. A film which far exceeds any initial ethnographic intention. A rare and ruggedly beautiful work of cinematic poetry. Ignore the naysayers. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member The crew shot this film in its titular location of Hortobagy with a cast made up of ordinary people and in the style of documentary. However ambitious the project may have seemed at the time and now, with a realism greatly enhanced by the story clearly inspired by everyday life, Life on Hortobagy is not a very entertaining film, with its dull pace and predictable storyline, and while even Italian neo-realists liked and are praised for using common people as their stars, they too used real actors to dubbed them for a reason. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/24/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Life on the Hortobagy

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