Identity Statement

Reference Code

HU OSA 313-0-2

Title

Experimental and Documentary Films

Date(s)

1971 - 1992

Description Level

Series

Extent and medium (processed)

3 Digital container, 0.0 linear meters

Context

Name of creator(s)

Ajtony, Árpád

Content and Structure

Scope and Content (Narrative)

The series consists of three films. Two of them was completed by the artist, the third one was finished in year 2018, five years after the death of Ajtony.
The first two films, "Dráma" and "Hungarian Chronicles" are well known pieces of Ajtony's legacy.
The avant-garde short fiction film written and directed by Ajtony titled "Drama" (Dráma), produced in 1971 by Balázs Béla Stúdió, Budapest, tells the story of a writer and his muse.
In "Hungarian Chronicles" (Magyar krónikák), screenplay co-written by Ajtony, and directed by Gyula Gazdag, three men and a woman revisit, both mentally and physically, their lives’ main events between 1956-1989 in Hungary. All of them had traumas in their lives. One of them survived his own execution, the other became a widower too soon, the third abandoned his Secret Service career to become a teacher, while the fourth was persecuted for his involvement in the 1956 revolution.
The third film in the series is a raw, unedited footage of Ajtony’s experimental fiction movie. They were delivered to OSA on two reels of 16 mm celluloid film. They seemed to be the various takes of a neo-avant-garde film, titled “Surány” (working title).
It is most probably a filmic adaptation of an improvisational theater play “The Breakfast of Adolf Kurtz”, performed by the then world famous underground theatre group of Péter Halász.
The play was performed by Ajtony, Halász and other underground artists at a sand pit in Surány (Pest County, Hungary) in August 1972. It was in the framework of an open-air avant-garde theatre festival organized by the Kassák Theater.
The events in the film seem to unfold around a rape of a photographer’s wife. There is no evidence that a fully edited version of “Surány” has ever been completed by Ajtony. There is no script nor any other documentation of the project either. The film “Surány”, as it is now is a reconstruction, a subjective rendering of Ajtony’s never finished fiction film.
After 45 years spent in a film reel box, the film is available for viewing in a digital format. The editor of the film is Darius Krolikowski, Digital Archivist at OSA’s Audio-visual Unit.

Accruals

Not Expected

Conditions of Access and Use

Conditions governing access

Not Restricted

Languages

French, Hungarian