While Hungarian film is struggling to survive - a proof of which is the promising, new generation that has just left the college and has begun slowly their creative, innovative work (not as radically as the great generation in the 1970s - the situation and quality of film posters has hardly changed (special films, however, require special posters). This might be due to the dilution of the graphic designer profession, although there is no lack of talented graphic designers or talented filmmakers, and while film is a highly money-dependent genre, of posters we cannot say that. The problem might be that while busy making films and trying to achieve something, poster-makers/graphic designers "forget" about an important element of promotion, the fact that they should design posters that match the film, and the quality of the movie in originality, idea and creativity.

The poster that is thought provoking, tasteful, modest, but impressive is a basic requirement for the distribution of the film. The poster should also be produced in postcard size and presented on the Internet.

In our age packed with pictures, however, people tend to overlook advertisements, street billboards, that is why contemporary Hungarian film should produce impressive, but good and not plain, commonplace, so called trendy posters.

An ever and always current problem of the Hungarian film is competitiveness and marketability, since film is an art for millions of people, and its proof to survive is to reach wide audiences, otherwise it cannot improve. Unfortunately, production costs are irrationally high, so only the income from tickets cannot cover production costs, let alone make a profit. Deep intellectual movies, born in torment are soon displaced, by successful tradesmen, public film, if they cannot find their way to the mass audience, we are already witnessing this tendency with the fast appearance of multiplex cinemas and the crashing of classic and real cinemas where atmosphere was always great (This "catastrophe" is most impressive in Budapest). The resort of poetic and high quality film still exist, but can survive only through united efforts, with the same tactics multiplex cinemas were originally designed and organized into networks. The only proof for the survival of these "art" cinemas is preserving the uniqueness, poetry, spirituality, as well as contemporary film.

Film is a mass art and its aim - in a rather demagogue and critical way - is to shape and improve the taste of the mess audience, as well as to develop their aesthetic and critical way of thinking. This aim cannot be achieved in the current stream of popular films and chewing gum films flooding from the west, and to tell the truth, they do not even strive to do so since the major aspect is only utilitarianism. The repetition of popular frippery, boosted with special effects - the formula is simple. High quality, new, original films do not really come over from the New World, and the few worthy movies are usually made by big names, big directors (mainly independent ones, such as David Lynch, Martin Scorsese) or some underground attempts, that disappear soon after its surprising and sudden success.

Perhaps, the performance, an alternative and re-born genre would be a possible way of refreshing the film.

A great attempt for such solutions built into the language of film was a video movie Tiszta lap by László feLugossy and János Szirtes, shown last year, even the title of which refers to one of their performances.

The film embeds performance inserts into the fantastic film-like dramaturgy initially in a strange way, but by the time the viewers get used to the somewhat shocking solutions, the film's satirical, fine humour and mood start to absorb them. The blending of this theatrical and intentionally provocative genre and the nature film is a very interesting and great attempt (the used video-technique helps a lot in making it homogenous.) the sad fact is that no original poster was made for this novel movie; the poster did not reflect the unusual language, or what we can expect from it. Despite the red colour, there is nothing flashy or special on the poster: we see the six main characters (one of whom, a pitbull, does not even appear in the film, not even as an reference): they scatter on the six dots of the dotted ball, as the six bullets of a gun (held by János Szirtes against his sweating temple).

The names and mottos of the film are written on the picture frames with loose, almost painting-like typography. These mottos are alternative, slightly naively provocative, but unambiguously refer to the bitter humour of the film, and although they can transfer some of it, they are not sensational enough, mainly due to the colour of the text spots.

The other, fantastic attempt is the film of two young men and a young team of creators: Youth is Reassuring (Az ifjúság megnyugtat), directed by Tibor Bánóczki and László Csáki, who graduated last year at the university of Applied Arts, majoring in animation and video art. The influence of the above mentioned filmmakers can slightly be felt in the film, the more so, because they play the major characters. László feLugossy portrays Gábor Tildy, the nihilistic, egotistic hunter, the president of hunting club, while János Szirtes plays the stationmaster, trying to find his way. Other characters include Tibor Miltényi as Martin Miguel, Györgyi Kasi as Icuka, Tildy's wife, Vasile Croat as painter, Kalavics and three members of the hunting club, Alfréd Járay as Uncle Feri, as well as András Huber and Gábor Pásztor.

The film is packed with great, excellently applied symbols, all of which show a distorted image of the modern world. The loos of values, the chase for profit, the lack of financial means, alienation, the desperate search for the meaning of life and nihilism are only "appetizers" of the serious problems of the film (and of our world) that are presented through relaxed, ironic humour. The film only makes description, and fails to give answers to the viewer to the questions that might crop up. It is up to ourselves whether we wish to answer them or not and this makes me love the film, since it does not let our thoughts go sluggish, on the contrary, it aims to open our eyes in a refined way. Values are gone; the paper animals Tildy is shooting at are not real, and perhaps he only tries to destroy saving of values or emphasize his own egotism by hunting only for "animals" of high nominal value. At such points flies (also made of paper) always appear, as well as the literally eyeless monster that is feeding on a carcass. In this world something really is rotten, constantly attracting flies. The attempts to save values are also the rescue of lives, such as the child-making action of Martin Miguel, the photographer (who got four 16-year-old girls pregnant, and one of the fathers will batter him seriously). In the key scenes at the hospital (Tildy faints on his fiftieth birthday, when he sees his present, the picture of the eyeless monster, which enrages him) and will be friends. Miguel utters the lines that while Tildy takes life, he gives it back; perhaps, there is still hope. Meanwhile a passing locomotive, while chasing the eyeless monster, tragically kills the unfortunate stationmaster as if it was his demon. So, perhaps hope is not to be taken for granted, since the road is seemingly lost.

The road, the truth and life, furthermore, Jesus Christ himself appear in the film several times, in rather grotesque scenes, in puppet animations, where the porcelain Christ acts as a puppet (a puppet of God, as a lot of Atheists value his role). He is an absolutely tragic hero, who is first trying to explain himself in front of dinosaurs and shepherds who throw apparent ambiguities and contradictions at his head, then he accepts the failure and gradually withdraws, also withdrawing his doctrines.

Finally, the two good friends decide to erect a statue for themselves in their lives (which they truly deserve) but definitely after they die. This creates the frame of the film, since it begins and ends with the unveiling of a statue, with the two "good friends" standing under the veil and the "statues" also remain veiled.

The film mixes the genre elements of nature film, cartoon- and puppet animation, thus aiming to bring the world of theatre, film and animation closer to achieve a unique effect. With this tool it is capable of authentically reflecting the chaotic nature of the world, since at times it shows strong surrealistic and Dadaist qualities. The puppet-animated scenes - with Christ appearing - are rather bizarre; the flies and the drawings of paper animals can be seen here. The film creates equality between the three genres; dramaturgy helps in it, but it also seems more homogenous with the use of video-technology. The influence of Danish Lars von Trier, the pioneer of blending low sensitivity, raw technology video with the film (the developer of the dogmatic style) can be felt here, however, this film in its image solutions is closer to "nature" films and more traditional film dramaturgy.

The task of the creators was promotion and the distribution of the film, which does not seem to have been successful.

They chose rather modest means to realize the image part of the posters; they simply lift one frame, and supply it with the obligatory typography (of which only the film presentation of the title is interesting). It is neither too original, nor too attractive: the poster failed to achieve its aim (although the images are witty and "reading" them with the title, they even show irony); the film was only talked about in professional circles (and during the 33^rd Hungarian Film Week). A really valuable, contemporary production was lost, or it had never really appeared in front of the audience (the projection failed at Tabán Cinema; sometimes it's on the program of Toldi Cinema, with only five people present at the last performance), for which the makers and the lack of promotion are to be blamed.

Golden City (Aranyváros) also suffered the same sad fate, although it has a much more fortunate poster, but does not have a lot to say either. The black and white picture shows the wrinkled, debauched face of a yet sensitive man; the portrait suggests a dream, a deep spiritual fire, warmth radiates from the sad eyes, with the title, Golden City below it. Unfortunately, the film had soon been withdrawn from art cinemas, so I didn't have the chance to see it.

By adapting to the western trends - cramming the major characters of the film on a poster-size surface (in a size deserved by their importance), as well as the typical scenes perhaps also making an attempts to express the mood of the film -, the poster of more and more Hungarian films will become extremely eclectic, crowded and unpretentious from a graphic point of view. The saddest fact is that this huge smudge of crowd does not succeed in creating a real picture; it wants to show too much, it's too narrative, tries to show the characters, as if thriving to tell the whole story in one picture; but is unable to use and takes no notice of the most important means of expressions of the moving image: time. Several examples could be quoted, since the streets and cinema hobbies abound in them: Mayday Mayhem (Csocsó), Bridge Man (Hídember) and A Kind of America (Valami Amerika) - they are mainly for the audience (it is a good way of hiding them among the posters of numerous US films, since thanks to the Hungarian typography, they are formally identical with them). There is nothing unique in them, no atmosphere at all; some of them are even disgusting.

The films themselves are valuable, great attempts, some have truly original solutions, that is why I do not see why a poster cannot "get away" a bit more, if the film is so novel, and why everything needs to be explained and said.

Recently, we have a fabulous promotion campaign (of course, based on a foreign example) that used the fashionable "screen transparent" and it remained low-key in its tools till the end, when the film was launched. Browned, puritan images that showed the characters on by one; brownish, cloudy sky nearing kitsch, sections referring to the land around Lake Balaton with a slightly blurred portrait in the foreground of a moving figure, mystical atmosphere, refined typography: this is Sobri. It works with few tools, yet it is a thousand times more effective and attractive series and poster from graphic and marketing viewpoints. It was a successful campaign. All the films should be promoted in a similar way.

Another trend is when a frame is taken from the film for the image of the poster with the images arranged as a mosaic, just like in Temptations (Kísértések) and an even better example is the poster of Sleepwalkers (Ébrenjárók). They are great, "revolutionary" films, the images are beautiful in the poster, and the atmosphere is suggested in a refined way, yet I feel that this is not enough, especially not in Temptations. There are exceptions, however, like (Egérút), in the poster of which the image is diminuted beside the elegant and effective graphics, creating a balance. The poster suggests the mood of a cheerful and easy-going, sad comedy with low profile typology that's also elegant and beautiful. The anti-Széchenyi movie, The Smallest Film about the Greatest Hungarian (Legkisebb film a legnagyobb magyarról) managed to spoof the film in a highly original way, completely re-interpreting, and the poster also refers to the basis of the parody; performers are present, too, the funny illustration of a stylised Chain Bridge is brilliant, creating a cheerful atmosphere in the poster.

Hukkle, György Pálfi's unique masterpiece, is one of the treasures of Hungarian film production with the beautiful poster. The poster refers to the wonderful, old film posters, and can turn into a real picture. Its uniform style is created by the interweaving stylised floral patterns with the title in the middle. The poster is elegant, precise and worthy of the film, being just as sophisticated (considered unique nowadays) and reticent as the film itself.

Creators of other film posters could follow this example.

(The author is a student of visual communication at the Hungarian University of Applied Arts.)