Visual revolution - change of the political regime

"Filmkultúra" but in "Társadalmi Szemle". It is perhaps true to say that the dispute was staged. The subject matter of the dispute clearly shows that it benefited cultural politicians rather than professionals of film; as what was said was simply what the government wanted to hear. This is why the dispute did not take place in the seclusion of a specialised newspaper but was given the widest publicity, with the party watching on, from October 1967 until may 1968.

At that time the cornerstone of a critical attitude was indisputably the closest possible depiction of reality: "We need to identify the major contradictions of the new life-condition, i.e. in our case society engaged in building socialism, as these are ultimately responsible for the conflicts and dramatic struggle of man in the new era. Initially only as the new life-condition; its deepening dramatisation... i.e. the specification of the sociological aesthetic ideal only becomes possible gradually". (Károly Nemes)

The depiction of reality as formulated during the overture is given a different emphasis by the secondary ideologist Péter Rényi, who closes the dispute by saying: "I am unable to make heads or tail of how this sociologically precise depiction of reality, these efforts to achieve scientific accuracy, the use of the tools of cinema direct seemingly almost in the spirit of objectivity can be handled on a common denominator with Jancsó's subjective metaphors". This means that something has been selected as the primary type of film, which is equal to the condemnation of other films and directors. Rényi tried to dilute this by saying that the conflict and dispute of these two trends in film "make the current age of Hungarian film exciting to me". (As if it was 30 years ago, when "social realism" was conjured up.)

As regards today's situation - some 30 years later, Nemes concluded that "Hungarian film continues the critical attitude started earlier, enriching it with the study of man, the reflection of his external conflicts and internal problems.... Hungarian film is as it is because of its close depiction of reality". (Valóság, January 1995)

But what kind of continuity can we really talk about?

Is it possible to continue the discussion about Hungarian film on the same footing as yesterday or the day before yesterday?

Is it possible to continue the same critical view of reality as before?

What is surprising in our case is not that critics tend to use the measurements of 30 years ago even today, but that others tend to do the same, considering the Hungarian film of the 60s to be a basis of comparison. As if that had been the "dream team", as in

"as you need a team." To be more exact, you need a myth, "it does not work without one"....

*

The Hungarian film of the 60s and its new wave was born out of and can be interpreted on the basis of a classical understanding of art, according to which true art is only born under certain specific circumstances and in it the internal world of the individual as well as the external world mutually unite in both their undiluted entirety. Although the two are sometimes at conflict, they basically harmonise with each other, i.e. their relationship is dynamic: man with his intellect and imagination is capable of grasping the entirety of both his own internal world and his external surroundings.

The value of a work of art depends on how it manages to portray central and fundamental human principles, difficult as they are to define, (critics usually circumscribe them when referring to works of art). This kind of art, with its tendency to condensation as well as attempts to achieve the widest possible range of effect, complies with our vision of the continuity of the real world.

The dynamic relationship between the internal and the external world can best be portrayed by drama, by a plot in which antagonism (the struggle of the stable world, of order against destructive forces and chaos, that of moderateness against profligacy) is followed by redemption: the world again reaches a state of harmony.

The artist must therefore be careful about the balance between the internal and the external worlds. Should he accidentally mistake it, his depiction of reality will either be rebellious, where his consciousness alone shall be the controlling and ordering power, or a "scientific" systemisation of mechanical laws where human beings are but living machines.

However, today's world seems to be an inordinate place. The past and future of the individual is a series of events and activities, while his present is a void. Man is not stable, he lacks an internal core, he lacks essence. Things like that are only attributable to objects and things.

As a stable reality no longer exists, traditional morals only serve as the explanation for some kind of an ordering of phenomena. Man does not act in order to implement certain principles like being good or honest but to explore himself.

Thus, each act is unique, lacking social antecedents or examples, is unmotivated even in the eyes of others, having no stable Ego which could be the fundament of motivation. Acts are self-serving and are, seemingly, meaningless. Every single act is a continuous re-creation. It is the state of freedom, demanding full responsibility from the individual, who at the same time wants to get rid of it, to get back into his passivity, into an object-like life. The world is turned into a series of accidents in the eyes of the human being, who himself is but an object.

Let us now see how Hungarian film got here....

* * *

At the time of the dispute already referred to, during the 60s, there was a change in mentality, which can be summarised in the categorical imperative of "back to reality". This change of mentality meant a rebirth as well as the self-criticism of Marxism, demanding a more objective view of society, necessitating object-oriented and empirical investigations. It was believed that "Vulgar-Marxism" could only supply dogmas, out of touch with the real world.

This is how sociology became appreciated as a social science. At the same time sociography was rehabilitated in literature, the important traditions of which nourished many a representative of the first generation of film. (Jancsó, Kovács). The effect of sociography could only partially be extinct by the doctrinaire attack on facts. The second generation (Kósa, Huszárik, Gaál, Sára) matured in an environment where documentaries and reports played an increasingly important role even in literature itself. (Twenty Hours, Report from the Tower, Deep-sea Streams).

The standard of depicting reality was adherence to Marxism. This danger was highlighted by the then rehabilitated Marxist philosopher, György Lukács himself: "Those who believe they can reproduce reality theoretically, while they can merely reproduce Marx's concept of reality through the interpretation of Marx, will find themselves faced with having missed both these aims. Only through an unbiased view of reality, its approach through the method discovered by Marx can one achieve both, i.e. adherence to reality and adherence to Marxism."

This "double mistake" was primarily committed by criticism, as is shown by the dispute of 67, which called film to account for the lack of Marxist categories and valued directors to the extent they applied them in their films. However, some film-makers equally fell prey to this approach. Film-making which turned its back on old schematism endeavoured to make its new attitude acceptable by emphasising the need of the new or regenerating society to be thoroughly familiar with reality and truth, and of this truth as portrayed by film, or "cinéma vérité", "kino pravda" is also a part, in its capacity as (filmed) information gained by a dynamic and open system of its own workings, which information in its turn is built into the system, making it ever more dynamic.

The reason why films of the 60s were of importance was that they gave publicity to and voiced problems which so far have been experienced as private. These films attempted to bring public opinion into interaction by manifesting latent views, prioritising opinions with which the creators of films could sympathise, thereby provoking counter-opinions and portraying the confrontation of views. Films thus creating and legitimising publicity did not entirely avoid being propagandistic when more or less openly endeavouring to make "New Mechanism" popular. Supporting reform meant supporting the government, as film-makers looked on the government as the guarantor of the implementation of reforms. This conviction was nourished by initiatives from above.

Films concerned with the rebirth of society counted on rationality and trusted the governing force of the intellect, intellect which creates a world where the power of the rational mind and the authority of truth rules over the reasoning of power and the truth of authority, a world where work, human and social activity, democracy, publicity and an active participation in politics ("the active film") form the cornerstones of society.

This trust in the rational mind and confidence in reform was, however, soon confronted with reality, which was characterised by spontaneous processes as reactions, and which - as the new movements of the left, in addition to contradicting old values, - opposed exactly this new rationality and consumer-orientation.

Soon it was revealed that the spheres of public life are emptied of matters of true interest, that decisions are taken in the background where cameras have no insight. A restricted publicity was covered up by formal representation, the (now internal) disputes by public arguing and staged discussions. Yet at this time many new phenomena and processes of the world could no longer be fitted into the existing conceptual-ideological framework. The new critical understanding of reality conflicted with official ideology and earlier official self-reflection, which still retained its monopolistic status and continued to consider almost non-existent anything in conflict with it. Micro-truths and group-interests were of secondary interest as opposed to the interest of the "entirety of society". The over-emphasising of this latter concealed attempts at restoration and recentralization.

Circumstances no longer favoured reform-mindedness, but in order to preserve appearances the watchword of "everyday revolution" was created, which offered no real ideal beyond phoney, empty pretension. This is revealed by films which seem to portray performance and an objective scale, and where those concerned seem to make decisions in their own affairs. Institutions of the era functioned in the same way.

Making things public, - as the idea inherently contained some kind of a socio-critical attitude - was confronted with non-genre and non-artistic obstacles. Documentaries were the first to be shoved to the periphery, and institutions, public forums and the ears of the public were suddenly shut for them, as well as even films in some cases.

Film-making had a number of ways to reflect on this seeming situation in the 70s.

It could either endeavour to retain the appearance of making documentaries, which resulted in a conflict with itself, making it confront the problem of artistic appearance versus the art of appearances. It could try to cover up representative "documentation", mixing actual and phoney-reality, by emphasising the role of appearances and an artificial character, supposedly forming a formal-technical framework of artistic creation only, as working with a created world is also true for documentaries.

This is why distinguishing between appearances/phoney-reality and reality becomes so important, why the relationship between the phenomenon and its true essence is of decisive consequence. The same problem featured in social sciences as well. Miklós Almási analysed the ontological conditions for the birth of seeming reality from a philosophical perspective (The reality of appearances).

Thinking - as part of the increasing importance of sociology - was approaching empiricism, rendering everyday reality the subject-matter of analysis. (Ágnes Heller: Everyday Life). Part of the reason for this was that the sphere of private life grew more and more detached from the sphere of social life, as a result of the rigidity and the restrictedness of the latter. (In film-making, studios were brought together and their independence restricted. )

Studio "Béla Balázs", with its internal democracy ensuring freedom of creation, could hardly be fitted into such a centralised structure. The result of this were lyrical-poetical films where great artists (Szabó, Sára, Huszárik) played freely with mediocre genres. Later on, as a result of the increasing importance of sociology, film was turned into a form of the presence of society: films created in SBB left their "production environment", reaching social publicity and becoming a form of criticising the system. This was sometimes restricted by "an absence of screening obligation", yet the era's cultural policy found emphasising liberalism of greater importance. SBB was the official product of the reform era, and recentralization did not make its disruption necessary. In spite of demoralising compromises, the studio managed to preserve its uncorrupted internal morals.

As part of the sociological vogue, SBB became the scene of the creation of films criticising and more or less openly, sometimes ironically and sometimes dramatically opposing the phoney reality restored by ideology. Some of these films merely portray the emptying of forms, while others discover new phenomena and processes behind, the full blossoming of which is blocked and under "more fortunate circumstances" distorted, by these very forms.

Those working in institutions find themselves in graver and graver conflict with civil society. The relationships of people working for the public, for society, of holders of public position are no longer characterised by consensus but by conflict. An increasing number of institutional structures are found to be functionally defective, and there is a growing understanding that more than only the parts are wrong, This realisation is carried further into the conclusion that the possibility of taking action is to be looked for somewhere else, outside of institutions.

By this, the institutional reform-mindedness of film became social reform-mindedness. Seeing institutions as responsible for alienating reforms, film-makers stood for returning reform to society, for "taking it back" again.

Endeavours of this kind informing about "second-class" reality with the purpose of having it built in into society's self-reflection were confronted with the absence of understanding and in many cases were excluded from official publicity. It had to be realised - although this may be a certain amount of exaggeration - that the publicity of the social structure could not be fitted into the structure of social publicity.

Thus, willingly or unwillingly, film was pushed from position to opposition by the 70s.

A reaction to this exclusion was an adjustment to this seeming state of affairs and an acceptance of the mere appearance of documentation. Documentaries loose their role as tools of something and become an end in themselves, a way of "let's play that we make documentaries". The arguments which before provoked so much attack are now missing and fiction is portrayed as document instead. From a sociological perspective, this new trend can be viewed as a secondary analysis of previous documentaries. From an epistemological/ontological perspective it is a strange compromise with phoney-reality and institutional publicity, as these works of art were created in feature film studios and were also distributed from them.

The "pseudo-documentary" was born alongside or amongst documentaries and feature films, claiming a place for itself, but never claiming the place of either. It was a reflection of the sudden halt of the other two, therefore its future and whether it will be a temporary phenomenon or an art-form of its own right, created by the "temporary age" and by the generation starting out in the 70s, depended to a large extent on whether the two older sisters were able to go through a rebirth or not.

A new "decision of labour" seemed to be emerging, where getting the message and the ideology through was a role to be played by fiction and feature films, while the true documentary stayed close to facts as the continuation of analysis required further facts. The "new-born" was nourished by documentaries as well as turning to feature films when dictated by its needs. However, it made attempts to get away from this latter temptation by searching for an independent dramaturgy.

At the same time feature films were also inspired by documentaries and the effects of sociography became clearly discernible. This may be part of the reason why "pseudo-documentaries" lost their freshness and came to a halt by the end of the decade.

* * *

his can be adequately described by the paradigm-shift which later was defined as a scientific and technical revolution at the time of the reform and as the metaphor of system-change later. In reality it was more than either of the above two. A paradigm is a collection of norms, methods and patterns which define facts and problems to be investigated, methods and tools leading to a solution of problems and acceptable answers. These can be related to art inasmuch art also depicts its subject by signs and symbols.

In film-making, this paradigm-shift was accompanied by a change of the visual experience. New theories (structuralism, then hermeneutics) made a number of film-makers look at the same facts through different conceptual optics, and opened their eyes to a different world through them.

Yet criticism still continued to think in the old conceptual system, which made the arguments voiced under different paradigms go by each other. There would have been a lot, however, to excite interest.

Gábor Bódy talks about a new, more symbol-conscious realism from the 70s and tries to justify his argument by application methods and paradigm cases. (Hunting for Small-Fox, Four Bagatelles, Studies in Motion, Night Song of a Dog). The cameras need to seek out that which has a significance, and symbols of traditional interpretation must be omitted from the view. Original sociological and psychological meanings must be put into new interpositions, taking isolated expressions to be the symbols of an environment. (Thus questioning and at the same time unmasking the reality-concept of documentarism.)

Film-making became part of the cognitive process. Its end-product is cognitive film - as defined by Miklós Erdély. The battle for the film-making environment, however, is often accompanied by the loss of the audience. The synthetization of experimental and classical film, intended by Erdély (Execution in Spring, Versions) was not or could not be followed up by others. (For all this, his influence is wider than just the film-making environment.)

The proliferation of the new electronic symbol-recording system(s) have had an important role in creating this symbol-consciousness.

Television, as a form of mass communication, is also responsible for some of the new characteristics of the situation. Not only did it attract away viewers from film, it attracted away the documentarist attitude as well. Due to its speed, it came to monopolise the transfer of information and adopted action and story from film. The industrial mass-production of images - which is a "privilege" of television - satisfied the hunger for information and ousted the film news-reel which used to transmit values. The difference between real and fictive images is continually washed away in mass production and mass-consumption, and previous understandings of the real, the true and the false go through a transformation, too. The primary source of the need for the motion picture became the need to be present, to be continually in motion.

Documentaries are subordinated to the images of phoney-reality portrayed on the screen, the mass-nature and monopolistic status of which makes it a basic element of publicity. Therefore television, in a sense, is far from having ousted documentaries. On the contrary: in time television became their commissioner, their place of production and their largest consumer.

Video, the challenge of today, bears great resemblance to film also as to its birth. It was equally created by a a boom in technology, developing into a form of art only later.

As the video-camera records the view as seen by audiences, its credibility and documenting value is greater than that of other forms of media. Yet the same characteristic attaches it to art just as much, as the recording and documentation of facts and actions as well as the gesture of research is increasingly emphasised in art.

Video reflects as well, yet this reflection is based not on symmetry but on the recording of image. If we consider the psychological effect here, namely that in this case pages are not interchanged as in a mirror, we have come to the difference. It is well known that the proliferation of video-technology, its easy handling and accessibility make it democratic, dynamic and documentative.

Its simplicity made it an ideal tool, and thus (initially) it was not used as a mediator but in place of the film-camera, as it did not require the oversized apparatus of film-making.

Its infrastructure, as opposed to that of film making, equals zero, which reminded Miklós Erdély of the railway structure.

Perhaps even this contributed to the fear of film-makers of video, who saw an existential attack in it. This partly explains why visual artists had a more positive reaction to the challenge posed by video. ("The medium of film thrusts the consequence of technological development - its child, Video-Oedipus - out of itself, and pointing out its state of being threatened it tries to shut itself up in between its own old conditions even more." - wrote János Sugár in Mozgókép 3. Studio Béla Balázs, 1988.) The appearance of video made it inevitable to see that technologically, linguistically and dramaturgically film-making changed hardly at all. Film-making, just like literature, continued to behave in a linear way.

The new tool presented an alternative to the aristocrats of motion-picture making. It started to dismantle its much too mythic character, profaned its myth by depriving it of its social background. At the same time it radicalised everything by putting a video-camera into the hands of minority- and radical groups. This is how in spite of censorship a visual "samizdat" was created.(Black Box).

Gábor Bódy tried to dissipate the anxiety of film-makers about video not only by employing it in his own films himself (Four Bagatelles, 1975; Psychocosmos, 1976 - the first Hungarian computer-film; Night Song of a Dog, 1983; the technological predecessor of clips and video-etudes.), but also by trying to create a positive environment for it in Studio Béla Balázs. He thereby attempted to persuade the two "poles" i.e. "outsiders", film-makers still at the academy, and avant-garde artists, to devote their attention to video. Although he himself was considered an official artist, his thinking was shaped not by positions achieved but by processes gone through. He understood that the genre of video is a medium, a new tool which works according to its own laws, including its flexibility and rapidity so unlike the clumsiness and complicated interchange of images which characterise films. He also clearly saw that the information provided through video has a more fermenting effect.

This is how Infermental, the first international magazine published on a video-cassette, was born at the beginning of the 80s. This was an event worth nothing less than joining the international network. However, this was not what established Bódy's international acclaim. That was much rather created by his practical and theoretical work abruptly ended by his premature death. He continued to take notes about the state of the new video-genres until the very last day of his life, and he was in the process of planning two anthologies about architecture and a music clip about clip.

Bódy saw the importance of clip in spreading an intensive form of expression which, even more than film, is capable of strengthening symbol-consciousness which in its turn could lead to a new visual culture and a new world-view. He even thought the renewal of the genre possible by processing literature and philosophical writing, confronting them with images in an extraordinarily thought-rich and intensive form. The history of film repeats itself, or rather the history of video repeats that of film: Bódy was just as unable to complete his writing and his work as Eizenstein was unable to complete his theory of colour-film.

Both realised that what they see is an epoch-making transformation.

In our case this transformation was a shift to multicultural visual thinking. How can one use the new tools in different cultural areas? How much are these tools fit to depict things and concepts and how much does art need a new kind of narration? This was coupled with language-philosophy (besides concept-art). Let a single sentence of Wittgenstein be our starting point. ("The flower is red") or of any other philosopher. The image itself should be the way of thinking.

Bódy's intellectual will was interpreted by many and in many different ways. The video-clip of philosophical content ("Philo-clip"), also created by him under the title De Occulta Philosophia as well as the Dance of Eurynome must in all likelihood have had an effect on Péter Forgács's The Back-Drive of Spinoza, Miklós Peternák's Zenon and Recommendations, and to some extent even on János Sugár's Faust and Tamás Szirtes' After the Revolution. The way Dárday handles video is yet again another level of effects. (Video on Video, Documentator).

Another effect was created by Gábor Bachman's (the visual designer of Bódy's films) installation designed for the Bódy memorial exhibition. In an exhibitions hall, Bódy's videos could be seen on a television-set placed on a constructivist-activist socio-real pedestal. Bachman considered a visual influence on society important.

Yet the question of heritage must be placed in its wider context. This was also hinted at by Bódy when he said that video evoked the interest of primarily visual artists and from among them especially avant-garde artists during the 70s. This heritage, i.e. performance culture, influenced video as much as the heritage of radio could be identified in early television.

At first, video was used for the documentation and the feed-back of performances, only to become part of symbolic performances and expressive actions. Demonstration becomes an act of art while a new level and a new code of personal appearance provides a new self-image in cinematography language, playing an important role in bringing images home. "Besides this a new kind of narration blossoms up in the art of video. This narration is at the same time the continuation and the natural ripening of the avant-garde of film: i.e. a narrated story without conforming to the traditions of film while not denying it but freely using it." (Gábor Bódy: Video-Concepts. Filmkultúra, 1986/No.2.)

A great number of visual artists came into contact with Studio Béla Balázs from the 70s onwards, taking part especially in the work of Group K3. (Complex Public Education Research Center). In addition to those already mentioned: Miklós Erdély, Dóra Maurer, Ákos Birkás, László Beke, György Galántai, Tibor Hajas, Tamás Olescher, János Szirtes, András Wahorn and later students of the Academy of Visual Arts. Most of them were members of the group of interdisciplinary thinkers, (INDIGO) with the addition of Ildikó Enyedi.

Their participation was probably prompted by the ethos of the avant-garde which contended that what was going on was not so much the creation of works of art as the production of objects. This state calls for reaction, and not for a formalised but a specific one.

Compensation may have played a part: the brush had to be exchanged for the camera. But a shrewd attempt at liberation from cultural politics as well as pure accident may equally have played a part. What appears to be of decisive force when watching these works, just like in the case of painting, is that the artist approaches the canvas or the camera as if it was a partner to him. The artist engages in a dialogue with his own work-tools, which improvisation does not result in an integrated story, as that is not to be found within film, but in the relationship of the artist to his own object.

The new conflict and drama of art - or rather the conflict and drama of the new art, - can be identified in this self-expression, self-creation, self-definition, self-transformation. A good example here is János Sugár's musical drama or rather video-opera, Immortal Culprits, which is built up of two main motifs. A narrative based on the interview about how the video-apparatus works and a theatrical play portraying and interpreting video. The scenery and the setting are made up of an oversized-chamber-model and a concealed representation of video (buttons: rec., play) The narrative and the play model the video-set, while songs are sung about its functioning and the appearance of the camera is the visual event. Characters escape as those of a post-modern story and by moving our finger from the REC. button they turn into a closed chain moving with the speed of events.

The camera is the main character in the feature film Camera in Trouble. Its first section gets us acquainted with the battle the camera has to fight with a situation immature for recording. We see the students of the Academy of Visual Arts on April's Fools' Day as they get hold of a camera, while we listen to the reasoning of the director on video. The second section shows how a singer tries to sing one part of this narrative. Insofar the film alludes to the previous video-opera as well as to Vertov's Man and the Camera. This latter is a pathos-full poem on film-cameras with the structure of a musical symphony. Sugár also investigates video as a poetic tool, but without any pathos. ("minus pathos").

As a result of the paradigm-shift which has become a truism by now, not only the status of reality but even the relationship of the individual to reality changed. Meaning is no stable thing but is created during the communication and dialogue with the work of art. (We see no understanding, "only" interpretation, based on hermeneutics).

The interpreter is the viewer entering the thought-processes of the director by (seemingly) subordinating himself to arbitrary motifs. He sees video and film as if sitting in a car rushing through the streets - as captured in world by Virilio. It is not the story which carries us away but the creator of the film who at the same time distances us and alienates us from the story the moment we are ready to associate with it. His improvisations show how the sequence of phenomena becomes a process of birth in reality.

The film-maker is not to blame for a disrupted story. He would commit a mistake if he edited vision according to the economy of the story and not for the purposes of visual effect.

Behind these pictures there is information society ultimately based on visual communication where gestures may be turned into visual information. (in much the same way as movements of the "mouse" are reflected on the screen).

A new visual culture is created which requires a different visual dramaturgy. By computer animation cutting may be altogether omitted, we move from one image into the other without it, and this is not merely a technological question. We are faced with the visual representation of human gestures.

The avant-garde traditions of film were transferred to video through the mediation of the avant-garde of visual arts. (Since then this has been "inherited" by commercials and clips while advertisements contain cuttings and montages reminiscent of Russian avant-garde. This raises the question whether is is justifiable to think along the line of commercial-non-commercial in such a structure.) The first video-installation activity seemed to prove this. The 1991 exhibition staged in the "Mûcsarnok" by the Art Documentation Center of the Soros Foundation was the first possibility offered for contemporary Hungarian video-artists to leave invisibility behind and step into the floodlight of wide publicity. (see Filmkultúra, 91/5; Filmvilág, 91/11).

Sporadic signs of the existence of a domestic video-art have already been discernible earlier. These signs became more frequent towards the end of the decade. In a compilation by SBB, Hungarian works of art have been screened at a number of European festivals by this time. The first students having majored in video graduate from the Academy of Industrial Art in 1989, and the creation of Erika Pásztor from among them is selected for the exhibition. László Almási and Péter Klimó exhibit their installations as undergraduates. Four grades have graduated since then, which means 18 people. The most important video-event of the year, however, was the success of the video-magazine Black Box, thanks to political change. In 1990 Péter Forgács's Private Hungary and András Wahorn's Living Animals in Eastern Europe have both won awards at international video-festivals. The same year saw the beginning of intermediate education at the Academy of Visual Arts. Its teachers, Miklós Peternák and János János were also the organisers of an international conference discussing the role of television in the Romanian revolution. (The media were with us Budapest, Mûcsarnok, April 1990. SBB, Soros Foundation, Media Research Foundation.)

Exhibitors at Sub Voce were recruited from among students of these two academic institutions as well. As opposed to traditional forms of art such as painting and sculpture, they created works of art of a complex atmosphere by way of a wider application of technology-based genres and the introduction of a higher number of sensual information sources. Besides versatility, two interpretations were discernible: 1.) to create an "interaction" between the video-image and the external space 2.) to create the video-image within a virtual and self-defined form. The common denominator of the genre was a location in space and television.

The video sculpture encompasses the TV-set which meant the object being situated in space and is suitable for the further elaboration of the principle of montage. It was Miklós Erdély who worked on this earlier, inserting the TV-set into an opening in a picturesque montage-wall. Miklós Peternák alluded to his installation by building one work of art into another. The exhibition was characterised by similar allusions to the antecedents of post-modern art and by cross-references of cultural situations, like the juxtaposition of Sub Voce and the Dutch installation exhibition Imago.

Videoinstallation can be inferred not only from sculpture but also painting, as a two-dimension image extended in space and time. "Painting as window", "painting as mirror", "film as moving painting" - these metaphors have been synthesised by Erika Pásztor in her architecture-like installation. Zoltán Szegedy-Maszák, on the other hand, connected a process of painting with living action.

"An epistemological paradigm-shift took place in visual thinking when the first human caught sight of his "present tense" self on the screen." - wrote László Beke in connection with the exhibition. A new space-time relationship has been created in the triangle of camera, man and screen (because the mirror-image which has been created is, contrary to traditions, upside down). Its short-cut version, the camera directed at the screen instead of the external world, is a basic possibility, too: it encourages audiences (film-makers) to interfere, to enter the closed circle of camera and screen, to become part of the eternalised flow of images. The viewer who enters the space of the work of art is able to shape the image himself - this is why video installations are interactive. This approach has been utilised by János Sugár's Minus Pathos Plus Myth.

The video created by Csaba Nemes (Oil-table) is to be characterised by interpassivity: the continuation of the wall-surface can be seen on screens levelled into the wall: - no one knows whether the wall "imitates" the image or vice versa.

Most of these installations are experimental and can even be viewed as the documentation of technological, epistemological and psychological research, while another trend was also discernible, one which attempted to create an aesthetic effect, adjusting video to an established ars poetica, assigning it a decorative function.

A similar trend can be seen with film-makers as well. The adjusting of the video to their own ars poetica is just as typical for them as its use out of pure convenience (by reason of the simpler attainment of tricks). Working with video can, however, be the result of external necessity, too.

Before discussing this latter, we need to mention two films: The Documentator is the documented version of the realisation that video takes the place of Super 8 film, taking over its political and sociological role as well. Dárday and his group made their video-novel at the time of the mass-proliferation of amateur video - on celluloid. In Sopsits's Videoblues video has a psychological and aesthetic value, unmasking the manipulative nature of film for all its bearing the characteristics of amateur art. Video as letter can even be connected to mail-art, as the new art-phenomenon was better suited to this amateur tool.

Tibor Klöpfler, who earlier shot professional films of great expenses as well as experimental ones, goes even further. Uninhabited Man has even been directed by him. It was first recorded on VHS and later transcribed onto celluloid, which helped alloy the depth and external radiation of video with the projected image of film. The result, the "scratched picture" creates the illusion of being antique. The fact that the material of the film is worn and grainy makes the scenes poetical and at the same time contrasts it with the technologically perfect, super-professional image-world. Also Klöpfler finds it important not to show everything, as neither of the picture elements are emphasised.

Let us finally highlight András Szirtes's two pieces of "forced labour" from among pieces of work on video. After the Revolution attempts to grasp as well as negate a moment (after the revolution) of which the maker, who at the same time is the main character of the film, is just as well part as Eizenstein, Bulgakov, the monographer of the latter, Mjagkov, or the cats. From the perspective of the film whether 7 or 70 years have elapsed since the time of the revolution has no significance, as the insecurity and temporary quality of the world have hardly changed. This is sufficient reason to feel a need of clarification: What is reality? What has happened and what may happen? This world cannot be described from a single external perspective but only by the parallel or superimposed projection of a number of perspectives, i.e. through the contemporary Russian avant-garde eye of film, through the director's dazed ("sobered?") eyes, through the eyes of the cat or those of Bulgakov (based on The Master and Margarite ).

Scenes of the revolution are shown with the help of archive material. The deterioration of their quality is attributable to the past. Images depicting the present - as the camera is born by the director/main character - loose their stability. They are adequate means of direct portrayal. The camera can thus be whirled around like a painter's brush. "I feel this to be a new visual-artistic enterprise at the same time. It is an enterprise in moving pictures, because it shows a most extraordinary visuality" - said Szirtes in an interview, which is similar to what has been said by Bódy: "Through video, the entire cinematographer way of life becomes similar to the mode of expression employed by the musician, the painter and the writer".

The graininess of the black-and-white picture, the result of a lack of technological perfection, is a means of increased visual effect which can be artistically coloured with the help of a computer. Szirtes turns the video-image into a painter's work of art. It is truly said that he makes the best possible use of the possibilities offered by video, - excluding only the high-technology introduced to film by video and which creates an overlapping between the two genres.

What is seen in Szirtes's film of video is its essence: a genre independent of film. The Life of the Marque de Sade is carrying this independence further. In this particular case, in the absence of a producer and of money, the technological solution of shooting the scenes with a PXL 2000 Fischer-Price camcorder by two people, exactly like in a home-made movie, was the result of an emergency situation. This 100-dollar toy produces technically so bad pictures that during screening they look like being projected from the Moon or a space-ship. The video-image made to look striped and grainy produces a direct mirror image of reality as it creates the effect of a report-documentary from a news-reel. The setting is no more than the large film-holder stand in the background with its six light-tubes. The costume of Péter Halász, playing de Sade, is a black molino with hundreds of 1x1 cm mirror-fragments.

"I wanted to have visuality on the most elementary level" - said Szirtes. He succeeded in that, turning necessity into a virtue. Elementary technology proved to be an assistant which helped him get rid of economic necessities and large corporations. A video- or film-maker can be just as independent as any other artist. This mechanism connects film to society, to people, to the original state where making films is a one-man enterprise again.

This is how film managed to find a new form for itself. This makes Szirtes's work interesting even as a document of the age. There may be many who do not consider his unclassifiable moving picture creation a film, yet it is a good example of how the moving picture survives its own "death", how it survives itself.

For this, however, the survival of the myth of the old film, of the old structure, of the old system of cultural ghettos, the traditional raising of generation barricades is quite not required. (As the positioning of those hurt in the past 40 years and during the system-shift is unnecessary, too). Instead of contemplating the past, one should see that the most exciting, most interesting attempts are made in the category of low-budget films, - independently of the discussions above or of gloomy exchanges of monomanias....

(The paper was written in the summer of 1995)