Until the  13th of December the Műcsarnok Museum exhibits a  cycle of the best Hungarian cinema form the 80s. Projections at the museum are held every Tuesday seeking to revive an era where a rupture with the classic look of films -matched to socialist realism- is abandoned even if it is present as a burden of  films that emerged from the avant-garde  Russian movies where each image is a work of art.

The history of Hungary has been plagued by tragic events, that film has recreated with ability, thus, the historical film legacy is huge. Just taking a look at these films is to understand that Hungarian culture has been forged in adversity, which has not stopped them from having great artists, musicians and a little known rich film collection

Since the seventies, Hungarian movies are divided into two tendencies, one which focuses on formalism and another one that assumes the reality as the object of their stories. In both cases the strength of Russian films based on the perfection of the picture continues to dominate, that is, the look of film as art.

One of the authors included in the list is the director of the film Ecstasy. András Kovács ,a film director and writer who directed about 30 films between 1961 and 1996. He was a guest and jury at the Cannes Film Festival of 1976. Kovács takes the theory of great Russian cinema, by looking through the existential conflicts of the individual and observing the conflicts of the world around him.

Another of the great directors whose films are in this cycle is János Xantus, with his 1988 film Rocktérítő. Xantus has been enshrined in the international cinema circuit with his film Mephisto in 1981, which won an Oscar, 8 prizes, plus a nomination. The story is set in the early 30 ‘in Germany, where an actor, who lives without taking into account the political situation focuses only on his art. When the Nazi power grows, he sees the chance to work with propaganda for the Reich. He  soon becomes the most popular German actor, but he sees his friends disappear and does nothing about it, opting to only satisfy his ego.

Filmmaker and journalist Victor Kubiszyn and his 1989 film Árnyékszázad are part of this cylce, drama being one of his favorite themes that speak of personal conflicts facing contradictory worlds where reality and unreality are one-jointed.

In addition to these films you can also see  Time by Andras Monroy, Me Babe from 1993, by Peter Reich and The Self Control of Laszlo Fe Lugossy from1988.

For more information

http://www.mucsarnok.hu/new_site/index.php?lang=en&t=597&curmenu=109

Nancy Guzman

The Danube, the wide avenues and bucolic setting is a great incentive to live during this fall in apartments in Budapest and enjoy the hot springs, presentations like this film cycle , in addition to their top quality restaurants.

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Translated by: Marc
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Until the 31^st of December, the Palace of Arts in Budapest exhibits “The Many Faces of Liszt” as part of celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the birthday of Hungarian musician Franz Liszt. This exhibition makes a journey through his life and travels through photographs and an interactive map designed by the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest. For this, the National Archive has cooperated by providing photographs and archival materials for the exhibition.

Franz Liszt was born in Raiding, on October 22, 1811, while that territory was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He began studying piano with his father and continued in Vienna, where he was the disciple of the pianist, Karl Czerny and studied composition with the Italian Antonio Salieri. In 1823 he moved with his family to Paris, a place that allowed him to begin his career as a musician and concert pianist. Taking advantage of his stay in in Paris, he followed lessons in composition with Ferdinando Paër, famous in his time by composing operas in Italian. He also took classes with the theorist and composer Anton Reicha.

His virtuosity in music, especially on the piano, took him to be one of the most important concert performers of Europe during the nineteenth century. It was said that his mastery over the piano and the quality of his performances led him to create advanced sounds, drastically changing the classical music and its interpretation.

As a composer he became the most prominent of the New German School and composed varied piano rhapsodies and concerts. His compositions notoriously influenced the twentieth century music.

But Liszt wasn’t only a pianist, composer and director; he also devoted his time to teach more than four hundred students. As a composer, he created nearly 350 works, wrote and collaborated on eight volumes of text, not including his correspondence with musicians and artists of his time. He made nearly 200 paraphrases and transcriptions of other piano composers.

Liszt was one of the most innovative musicians of the nineteenth century, being demonstrated in the creation of complex nuanced chords that surprised critics of his time, because of his break with musical traditions. For this, he explored new musical paths with his technique of thematic variations. We can appreciate them in the Sonata in B minor, 1853, as the simple beginning notes that are being transformed to give the work a strength tone. This technique influenced dramatically in the work of Wagner and Strauss. His compositions for piano required a difficult technique, which gave the instrument a completely new sound.

All these qualities of his work, made Liszt to be one of the most famous musicians of his time and that’s what this exhibition is, a full tribute held in Hungary to one of the most important men in music history.

For more information http://mupa.hu/en/program/the-many-faces-of-liszt-photo-exhibition-2011-10-08_10-00-elocsarnok

Nancy Guzman

Music is always a good stimulator to senses, so if you want to assist to the tribute to one of Hungary’s most important musical artists of the nineteenth century, rent apartments in Budapest and come to the Palace of Arts.

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Translated by: Hans
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The 18th of November, the Budapest Ludwig Museum opens the exhibition of works by the Hungarian artist Rita Ackermann. The exhibition is curated by Kata Oltai, who has organized it around her latest works which are juxtaposed with some of her early works, within the space given to the Museum of Hungarian artists who have so far been not very well-known.

Rita Ackermann was born in Budapest in 1968. She studied Fine Arts in Hungary. In the late 90′s she moved to New York, where she lives and works today. She started her career as a painter and then evolved to complex visual arts, influenced by trends and discussions on art in the United States and her studies at the School of Art in New York. Her complex works reflect her own transformations and became one of the favorites of the underground of New York at the end of the twentieth century.

Her works, interestingly combine different art languages. Music, image and plastic, which adds a variety of languages and particular expressions, typical of the youth or certain social classes that give her a sense of wholeness and content on the world around New York, as a summary of all cultures.

Her series of drawings and collages with pieces of poetic texts reflect the search for answers from a youth that lost its generous dreams for humanity and is now plunged into drugs, alcohol and promiscuous sex, almost like a collective suicide. She is not looking to respond to the existential anxiety with her work. Rather there are only questions, not interpretations or social criticism. Those tasks are left to the viewer, looking respond to and interpret the uncertainties about his/her generation.

Her perspective and story focuses on fertility and pornography. They are diametrically opposed to contrast the procreation and pleasure, in socioculturally terms they are decoupled. Ackermann tries to betray the location of a generation immersed in a society, which is constantly bombarded with messages about pleasure, but when people dare to do what the messages say, thy get punished by the law. This was reflected in her most interesting work Escorpionun, which juxtaposes images and texts.

This is the first stage of work, which opened the way to the stage where Ackermann examines art and the historical process contained and expressed through art, focusing on traditions and concepts of European painting, in contradiction to the U.S. . An interesting look that goes to the debate with the history of art.

Ackermann’s work at the Ludwig is an interesting exhibition to appreciate, this symbolic imaginaries of the Hungarian artist, because all of them are her vision of two worlds, the origin and the arts and everyday life.

For more information http://ludwigmuseum.hu/site.php?inc=kiallitas&kiallitasId=764&menuId=44

Nancy Guzman

The Danube, wide avenues, culture, romance and coffee is what you need for this fall. Just rent apartments in Budapest and come to enjoy the best moments of your life.

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Translated by: Hans
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“She arrived at the bridge and crossed it to the centre, now walking heavily because the snow opposed it and from the Danube there was a wind that grew below, a difficult one, which sticks to you and harasses you.” ‘Lejana’ by Julio Cortázar.

In 1951, the writer Juilo Cortázar published his book of stories ‘Bestiario’, the first story book which the writer felt that really expressed what he wanted to say. One of those stories is ‘Lejana’ (‘Far’). ‘Lejana’ is a fantasy story in which a woman, Alina Reyes, from Buenos Aires, feels the cold, the pain and the angst of a woman who lives in Budapest. She feels her like if it was herself. She feels her double. The story is beautiful and you can find it on the internet. Towards the end, Alina from Buenos Aires and Alina from Budapest meet and hug on one of those bridges which cross the Danube.

I ask myself in which of the bridges which cross the Danube and join Buda and Pest will Cortázar have imagined that hug?

On the Chain Bridge? That’s the oldest and most famous. It was inaugurated for the first time on the 20th of November 1849, after 20 years of construction. During the Second World War it was destroyed. Afterwards, in 1949, it was inaugurated after its reconstruction. Maybe we could consider it the perfect place for the union of a person and her double, with it being a bridge which is actually two: the 1849 one and the 1949 one. Also, the Elizabeth Bridge, which was built in the honour of the Empress Sissi, is two in one, rebuilt after the War. But something discards it: its recent reconstruction was in 1964 and, as we already said, Cortázar’s story was published in 1951.

There are six other bridges to take into account (and to visit when you go to Budapest): The North Rail Bridge, which as well as being a bridge for the railway also can be used by people and bicycles; the Árpád Bridge, inaugurated in 1950, probably in the same year that the Argentinian writer began to plan his story although, thinking about it, a new and modern bridge would not be as attractive and poetic for a story such as ‘Lejana’; the Margaret Bridge, designed by a disciple of the French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, which we shouldn’t rule out because we know that Cortázar lived and loved Paris.

Out of the three remaining ones, it could also be the Liberty Bridge or the Petőfi Bridge, but the one which definitely wasn’t was the Lágymányos Bridge, which was built in 1995, eleven years after the death of the author of ‘Rayuela’.

vali

When you go to spend a few days in the city, having booked already apartments in Budapest for your stay, take ‘Bestiario’ by Cortázar with you and read ‘Lejana’ on one of its bridges.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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The most famous band of the Neue Deutsche Härte, is on tour with its biggest hits, I’m talking about Rammstein. The Germans are tuning their machinery for an extensive tour that starts in Europe and extends for the rest of the world in 2012.

Rammstein was formed in 1994 by Richard Z. Kruspe, Paul Landen, Till Lindermann, Christoph Schneider and Cristian Lorenz, all of them are still current members of the band, which from the beginning stood up from the others, because of their industrial metal sound that they call “Tanzmetall” which translated into English would be “Metal to dance.” The name of the band is due to a small problem with the spelling of a German city called Ramstein, where a very serious plane accident happened in the late eighties. According to the members of the group, such mistake was due to an mistake in the spelling of the name of the city with two m, but the truth is that it has double meaning as the word made ramm stein mean something like “the stone that sinks”, also, because of the verb “to come” (rammer), but hey, this is already a subject for another discussion, as have the meaning that has the name of the band, the fact is that since their first gigs in bars and clubs in Germany to this day they have sold more than 12 million copies of their albums worldwide, which have changed the life to their own lives  and their fans.

With 8 albums released, adding to the over 20 singles, live DVDs, photographic works, etc, etc., The band decided to record a compilation work of all their hits, called “Made in Germany 1995-2011″, name of the tour that takes them to Budapest, which will be their second stop. The concert will be held in the Papp László Budapest Sport Arena on the 10^th of November at 20:00 hrs. For pricing and more information, please check the attached link: http://www.rammstein.de/tour2011/index.de.html

Luz Obscura

A tremendous opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, on one hand, to enjoy a beautiful and historic city, and on the other, to enjoy a band that will play all their greatest hits and more. Rent apartments in Budapest and be part of “Made in Germany 1995-2011.”

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Translated by: Hans
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One of the most important retrospective exhibitions of the work of the artist, architect and urban planner, Yona Friedman, opens on the 28^th of October 28 at Ludwig Museum in Budapest. This exhibition, which will be on display until the 8^th of January 2012, covers theoretical processes, artwork, projects and drawings by Friedman.

The Exhibition is organized to cover almost all relevant aspects of this artist, including the development of his work as an architect, urban planner and the theoretical approaches that have become a required source for young artists and architects who produce works using as a stage the public space or are worried about it and the link of them with the individuals.

Yona Friedman was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1923. He is considered one of the most important living contemporary artists in this country, despite his French nationality. He was famous for his anticipating theories about urbanism and also for building interesting concepts that revolutionized the way we see the development of cities and human settlements, raiding models based on sustainability. He also explored the animated film and design.

He is considered the father of utopian architecture; his proposals are always placed in areas bordering the creation and theory, even leaving many of his statements in an “unsolvable” state in terms of technical and practical aspects. Hence the name of utopian architecture.

During the World War II, he managed to flee from the Nazi repression and moved to the city of Haifa, Israel, where he stayed for over a decade. In 1957 he was finally transferred to Paris where he became a citizen in 1966.

In 1956 he participated in the 10^th International Congress of Modern Architecture in Dubrovnik with his “Manifesto of the mobile architecture”, revolutionizing the art scene with his perspective on the creation of cities, where inhabitants can enjoy the freedom of movement, breaking with the idea of rigid architectural structure.

Among the applications or forms of materialization of the “mobile architecture” he proposes the concept of “Space City”, which raised the possibility of building mobile and adaptable spaces, detachable and changeable for their own inhabitants. A revolutionary idea of social architecture, that ended up permeating his entire career and his work.

In 1958 he founded the research group Mobile Architecture (GEAM), not for long, but with a short productive life, the group was dissolved in 1962, being a fundamental reference for the process of change and transformation in the early 60′s.

Among his most important works are the Cylindrical Shelers a construction proposal for immigrants, done in 1953, Span-Over notebook in 1958, where he developed his manifesto Mobile Architecture and in 1989 the Science Museum of La Villette in Paris.

In the area of the theory, the publications: Toward a Scientific Architecture at MIT Press, 1975. Meina Fibel in 1982 and Pro Domo ACTAR D, 2006. These and other publications reported a proliferation of theoretical and supported his effort to make room for thinking about a better life in cities.

For more information http://ludwigmuseum.hu/site.php?inc=kiallitas&kiallitasId=763&menuId=44

Nancy Guzman

If you’re spending a romantic autumn in apartments in Budapest walking through its beautiful streets and enjoying the amazing architecture, you cannot miss the Museum Ludwig and this second to none exhibition.

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Translated by: Hans
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For the ancient Greeks at the beginning of everything there was the Void, an infinite and very black void where it was impossible to see anything and all boundaries blurred into nothingness. In this vacuum called Chaos, Gaea was born.  Earth emerged from Chaos to firmly and clearly represent  and stabilize its antithesis (although in its depths it reproduces its original chaotic state) and give the world a ground to walk on.

Well it seems that the world would’nt be much without earth, hence the human have a need to explain everything, even the inexplicable. There is a constant escapade in the mystery of the origin of the species, there is the Nietzschean who prefer to believe in nothing rather than not having anything in which to believe in, there is the impulse that led to Einstein himself, terrified of the inevitable implications of his scientific discoveries , usually in a reassuring way, to invent a constant universal law to mantian a ground to keep us safe so an entire world will not vanish from under our feet

The ancient Greeks, like many other cultures, tried to explain what was there before the world took its form and  which we know about through a series of memorable myths and stories which today, despite the fact that names on them are still everywhere are as fascinating as ghosts barely known.

Somehow, the stories in the news  seem to be confusing, they increasingly seem just like the Greek Chaos: a black abysmal and undifferentiated night. On the other hand, as they become more sophisticated,  most seem to resonate within the remote voices the create, while displaying a seductive language often more appealing to imagination than to cause trembling and awe. Throughout thousands of years in different parts of the world, cultures spoke about the same things in not very different way.  Stories that teach us small contemptuously myths and superstitions considered expendable

Ours do not seem less fragile, however, no matter what the need for land is , occasionally things happen, new “findings” that undermine the self-sufficient arrogance we possess. Things such as the recent “discovery”, which we shall best call “sighting of a new star” in the Milky Way that is almost as old as the age of the Universe. This star, SDSS J102915 +172927 called, given its composition, which apart from hydrogen and helium shows traces of some other heavier element  and according to the scientific community should never have been able to form, which somehow returns us to the void once again. The new star is not in the beautiful Budapest Planetarium (http://www.planetarium.hu/) but it is such an evocative building that no one realizes that it is the star that shine brighter among the ones found there

Paul Oilzum

Do not miss the opportunity to visit this extraordinary place shaped as a flying saucer when renting apartments in Budapest If you do it on a rainy day, suitably accompanied, and recall the film Manhattan you will hardly find a more romantic place in the city. And if not the void seductively invites us, and that’s truly romantic.

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Translated by: Marc
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With the 20th Anniversary of the first permanent exhibition, the Ludwig Museum presents until the 23rd of October ‘Site Inspection – The Museum on the Museum’. The exhibition focuses on the present discussion on the museum and its meaning on art, the artists and the public.

This exhibition is commissioned by Katalin Székely and, together with the museum’s curatorial team, she looks to expose the great changes that the museum space has gone through down the years and the critique that part of the artists have made in all this art process in the 20th and 21st century.

This ambivalent relationship of the artist with the institution has been regular and permanent in the world of art. A contradictory relationship where the artist requires: it, but at the same time directs his most intense critiques to the social representation space that museums are today: a space of power, a fundamental step in the market and a status mark and work value.

The exhibition puts special emphasis on the avant-gardist call of the 70s, both in the local and international space. This special outlook to avant-gardism is because in some shape or form, its institutional review can be considered a precursor of contemporary thinking spaces on the museum.

But we can’t forget previous processes on this critique, like the ones lived by the artists of the so-called avant-garde. Such is the case of Marcel Duchamp, who was one of the first to pose the paradoxes of work and its context, the relation between the artist and the museum and the one between the artist and the spectator.

For the conceptual artists of the 60s and 70s, this becomes crucial. The work loses or gains meaning according to its context and, for this reason, the museums transform into immobile and rigid spaces where the shapes and established spaces for each exhibition become disconnected from its process and from the relation with the spectator. For the avant-garde, the museum is part of the social gearing and, in the same way, ideology, representation of the shapes of social relation and the market in which they’re inserted. For that, its critique and investigation is directed to the social space as a whole.

This interesting and complex situation is well reflected in a series of films and videos that are presented in the film space in the exhibition, with works by artists such as Costa Gavras, Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock and Aleksandr Sokurov among others.

The artists that begun the institutional critic through their work or in their investigation projects during the 60s and 70s, they consciously made works that weren’t marketable and salable, many times, with the idea of carrying out a short or invaluable project for the logic of the market.

That way we can appreciate in this exhibition works by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Andrea Fraser, Halász Károly, NETRAF, Dalibor Martines, Alan Sekula, Hans Haacke or Azorro Group among others.

For more information: http://ludwigmuseum.hu/site.php?inc=kiallitas&kiallitasId=782&menuId=43

Nancy Guzman

If your destination option this summer has been to walk along the shores of the Danube and having a relaxing time in apartments in Budapest you can’t not visit the impressive Ludwig Museum and walk through this exhibition that gathers great 20th century contemporary artists.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Until the 25^thof September at the Műcsarnok Palace in Budapest, the exhibition: European Film Gateway is – The age of Hungarian Silent Film will be presented, in which we will be able to appreciate a selection of silent films, photographs, posters and a special collection of the Hungarian National films Archives which is part of the European film Gateway.

The exhibition is based on a project launched in September 2008 by the European Film Gateway, with the participation of 12 countries, which contributed 20 film archives, in order to organize the film heritage of Europe. The process of collecting and digitizing films, photographs and posters has had a great response, achieving the digitization of 790,000 pieces, among which there are 1,200 posters ranging from the early twentieth century until 1990. Visitors can check the multimedia content of the exhibition, including 200 hours of the films of Béla Balálzs Studios.

In the exhibition you can see the research about silent films, since many films have been lost and the only way of rescue them is through newspaper clippings, publications, photographs of the artists and all that plot production.

Also, you will be able to appreciate works rarely seen before, as the silent film version of Aranyember or Golden Man directed by Sandor Korda and scripted by Laszlo Vajda in 1918. This film marked a milestone in the Hungarian film industry because of its interesting work of acting direction. Korda became one of the most prominent men in the British film industry, to the point of being knighted by Queen Elizabeth because of his contribution during the Second World War.

Sandor Korda’s real name was Alexander, and he was born in Hungary in 1893. Son of a Jewish family, he worked as a journalist in the beginning of his carreer. He was an active participant in the formation of the Hungarian Socialist Republic. Since 1932 he lived in London and made films in several countries in Europe and in the United States.

Another silent film that has been preserved and displayed is Éjszaka by Utolsó or Last Night by the Hungarian director Jenő Janovics. Janovics was born in 1872 and belonged to a group of filmmakers from Transylvania. He was a film director, screenwriter and actor in silent films. He directed 30 films during the 20′s and the public acclaimed them all.

Aphrodite by the Hungarian director Alfred Deésy is another of the silent films that will be shown in this exhibition. This film was released in 1918. Deésyn was born in 1877 and worked in the film industry until his death in 1961. He was a film director, screenwriter and the most acclaimed Hungarian silent film actor. His films were famous for representing simple elements, always with a high burden of melodrama, which gave very good results with the public.

For more information

http://www.mucsarnok.hu/new_site/index.php?lang=en&t=586&curmenu=103

Nancy Guzman

If you like silent films, this exhibition is a good experience to enjoy. So stay in apartments in Budapest and attend this exhibition, delight yourself with the best of the silent film industry.

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The Hungarian National Museum has in its galleries the work of the 19th century Hungarian painter Károly Markó in the exhibition From Myth to image, which will be open to the public until October 2nd. The exhibition is commissioned by Hessky Orsolya, Bellák Gábor and Drago Zoltán and it’s a product of the cooperation of museums in Barcelona, Vienna, Bratislava, Copenhagen and Prague, as well as public and private collections that put forward to the disposal of the museum works of high value.

The exhibition enters the work of Markó in his mature phase, when he establishes his own style after his artistic experience in Italy and he comes close in a definitive way to European contemporary painting.

Károly Márko, known as “The Old Man”, was born in Levoce, currently Slovakia, in 1791. He studied in the Arts Academy in Vienna and in the Rome Academy, where he transformed into the most outstanding artist in landscape painting that was formed in that academy. His grandeur trespassed the borders of Europe, being considered by experts as the artifice of the Hungarian painting school and the artist of major influence and significance.

Following the fashion of the time, Markó spent large parts of his life in Italy, where a large amount of the European artists got together attracted by the art development there. Due to the valuation of his work, he was named a member of the Academy in Florence, Venice and Arezzo,. where he left a school that followed his composing, lighting and thematic lines.

He was also invited to give class in the San Carlos Academy in Mexico as a teacher of landscape due to his exquisite work of luminosity, color and composition. But despite the tempting offer, he decided to hand over the invitation to his disciple, Landesio, who transmitted the formation that he’d received by Markó in his painting classes.

Markó’s painting took scenes that put as a pretext a scene of mythology or religiousness to outline and fixate the attention to the landscape, which is represented in panoramic views dominated by warm lights and nature details.

The influence that Markó had among the painters of the time was huge. The handling of the light in his landscapes and the composition make of his work one of the most interesting ones of the 19th century, to the point that through Landesio he left his print among the painters that transported the Roman landscape to the Mexico Valley and its volcanos, like various heirs of this tradition did.

Visegrád is one of the most famous paintings by Markó because it captures in an incredible way the luminosity of the mountain landscape that is located in the sinuosity of the Danube, in Hungarian territory. This painting is considered a cultural icon in the region and it reproduces with authenticity the peculiar topography of the place.

For more information: http://www.mng.hu/en/exhibitions/marko_nyito_en

Nancy Guzman

If you don’t know the work by Károly Markó, I invite you to come to the Hungarian National Museum if you’re around the area and enjoying apartments in Budapest There you can see that landscapes that made this painter famous.

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