 Edit Kőszegi 33 KByte |
Edit Kőszegi was expected to show two films at Film Week '98.
The title of her documentary is A Timeless Tale, in which a young girl tells about her life. Her feature film, entitled Sitiprinc, recounts the life of Rudolf Horváth. The film, through the presentation of the life-story of a turn- of- the -century adventurer, attempts to demonstrate a variety of different cultures and the possibility of a mutual tolerance for what is different in others. The film also shows the traditions of itinerant Gypsy communities, now a rare phenomenon. Cinematographer was Francisco Gózon. |
Edit Kőszegi : I have been making documentaries of the Gypsy population for years. Of the Faragó family in Kétegyháza in 1993, e.g., entitled Sorrow Going Into My Eyes. I like to work with them, and find it of importance that films be made of them, because it is awfully little that we know of their lives. Prejudices are born also because we do not know their culture and do not have the faintest idea of their customs. Yet without some knowledge of that kind it is terribly difficult to accept them. Could we make their thoughts - that move according to an entirely different set of rules - more comprehensible, then perhaps they themselves became more acceptable as well.
Sitiprinc means a duke of prison. The word is used in prisoners' jargon, denominating those who have been raised above their inmates and receive extraordinary treatment in prisons.
The story of Sitiprinc takes place at the beginning of this century.
Then, the murder and robbery case of Dános provided an excellent pretext for the country to blame all its problems on the Gypsies. The Minister of the Interior issued an appeal to the country, saying that if anybody had any idea as to the solution of the Gypsy problem, he was there waiting for it. An impossible correspondence started up. From the masseur to the butler, from the chior girl to the textile designer, everybody thought they had an argument to add to the discussion. Countless of letters came to the Ministry of the Interior. The contents were terrifying. Just an example: in order to make them identifiable, a number should be tattooed into their right ear..... then also the left ear, and if something happened to the ear, then below their shoulder-blade. This was a serious proposition, a solution offered to solve the Gypsy problem.
We are trying to make a montage out of archive photographs and films, and add these stories on the sound track. They look weird.
Did you actually hold one of these letters in your hands?
Yes, that is why I became interested in this story. In 1993 we made a Gypsy album, I edited the textual parts. It was then that I read these letters and found the life of Rudolf Horváth in the same package. In all likelihood, Rudolf was persuaded in prison to write his memoirs and recount all that had happened to him. He had a most extraordinary life.
" ... I was given everything I could only wish for, they made me tell my story, and in the end the priest himself rushed through his prayer only to hear what came next... "
(Rudolf Horváth 1907, Sopron Convict Prison )
Rudolf Horváth was born as the son of an unmarried servant maid. Adopted at the age of six and with his mother dying soon, he ran away from his adoptive father and joined a group of itinerant Gypsies, who repainted his colours, dressed him in Gypsy apparel and accepted him as one of themselves. Wandering with them up to the age of fifteen, he visited such distant destinations as Krakow and Moscow. On their way home it was unexpectedly revealed that he was not a Gypsy and that he had been searched for everywhere, so he was taken home. His uncle set out to make him into a decent man, which proved to be all too difficult an undertaking as Rudi behaved like the wilds. He was quite unable to eat in a respectable way and preferred to sleep on the floor.... He forgot everything of the world and the culture that nurtured him six years into his life. He escaped again to return to the Gypsies. Caught, he was taken to the Aszód reformatory school. When he was released, he had a difficult time making up his mind about which his real home was, where should he now return. Eventually, he settled for the Gypsies again, but he felt occasional desires to return to his parental home, which prompted him to leave the caravan. Yet as his uncle, as well as his two sisters now married, preferred to isolate themselves from him entirely, he joined the army and became a Hussar. He had a great time riding horses, but was quite unable to cope with the constraints, so he deserted the army as well. The fate of the Gypsies became increasingly difficult following the Dános case, and a settlement of the Gypsy problem was widely demanded the country over. Their horses and carts were taken away to stop them wandering. They found no employment because an air of fear and mistrust enwrapped them after the murder and robbery case. Neither was Rudolf Horváth - wearing Gypsy-like clothes, trusted. He broke into the palace of the Count Kázmér Zichy and dressed up as a count himself. For some time it seemed to work, but then he was arrested and taken to prison. An interesting way to search for one's identity, isn't it ? ... when somebody says " I would like to be a count ". Throughout his life, Rudolf was doing nothing but changing clothes. He dresses up in uniforms, in Gypsy clothes, traditional Hungarian costumes, normal urban attires, what is more! - as it was the priest who persuades him to put his memoirs down he even becomes a prison ministrant. Thus, the series of his costumes becomes truly complete.
Rudolf Horváth has been border-crossing between two cultures, feeling at home now here and then there, but setting roots nowhere - as much as he would like to in both. The Hungarians take him for a Gypsy, while the Gypsies for a Hungarian.
What posed the greatest problem during shooting?
We had to struggle with time and funds. This film has been made of inexplicable little money. When we set out, we had a budget of HUF 25 million. We calculated the number of days that we would need to shoot this film, and we ended up with 33 days. Yet our budget would only allow for 18. We then had to omit half of the screen-play and squeeze the rest into 18 days. This made us terribly nervous and full of anxiety, we kept looking at our watches all the time. We did not stop between the shootings in Transylvania and Kétegyháza. Upon our arrival at Kétegyháza, we had to realise that the people there had not expected us, and we were unable to talk to them, care for them, in one word, give them the chance to start working with us. We went there, but did not start shooting with them, we did not even go to see them.
We ourselves have given rise to the conflicts - being unable to keep these situations under control. During the tent scenes the conflict arose because they argued that if because of us they cannot go shopping and get their meals, then we are to see to that they get them. If we were unable to cope with that, it was self-explanatory that they would take to their hammers.... in cases like this the hammer does start swinging. It does not hit anybody, but we of course immediately felt extremely endangered, even if it was ourselves who have not played by the rules. And why do we fail to play by the rules is, indeed, a next question.
Where did you cast your characters?
We found a truly itinerant group in Transylvania, with tents and everything. They set out in springtime, put up their tents and return home again towards the end of October. In the meantime they prepare and sell kettles and other utensils for making brandy. They are called "Chelderash" Gypsies. The truly fantastic is that while they are tenting, they do begging as well, i.e. everything is done as in the past. And then they asked me if they could receive a copy of my film. I looked at them, saying yes, but where would they see the tape? They said well, in fact they had beautiful houses with many rooms at home. I have an idea of what these can be like, because I have seen such houses before. Even if I have not seen theirs. In winter, they live in tiny palaces, and then their way of life is entirely different. Then there is video, television, everything. And money, too. True, the work they do is extremely strenuous, but they make good money with it. They live this double life, which to them is entirely natural.
Why do you think this is so?
That is what they have got used to. Looking around, they see that people have houses..... and it is still cold in the winter.. and they start to comfort to this. Wandering has to do with the way they make their living. They wander because of their work. They provide the surrounding regions with kettles, then go further.
We have worked with these two groups, the one in Transylvania and the other in Kétegyháza. I met them during the conflict of 1992, when their houses were set on fire. I always go to visit them. The adoptive parents in the film are also from Kétegyháza, and we have taken them along to Transylvania. One group spoke only Romanian and Gypsy, the other only Gypsy and Hungarian. But as they were both Olah Gypsies, they understood each other and translated for us. They acted as our interpreters.
There were some professional actors in the film, too. The main character was Misi Szabados, the prison director Lajos Kovács, the priest who was helping Rudi all through was played by Tamás Végvári, his mother Mari Nagy, the uncle B. Székely and the adoptive father was István-Bütyök Bicskei, the Transylvanian actor whom I like a lot. And the little boy whom I adore, Balázs Dobszay. The little boy may well tell the whole story in a narrative form, because there is a children’s' story quality to the whole thing. I hope we shall have finished by the Film Week.
How did you like the acting of the Gypsy amateur actors?
With the Kétegyháza group I had a feeling that they were playing a role, the role of their lives as they thought it was in the past. They made it up about the way grandma must have done it. For this reason they had difficulties taking it seriously. Whereas the other group did not need to take anything seriously, as they were playing their very own lives. Shooting was inconceivable rapid with the tenting Transylvanians, and takes were less likely to be omitted there. We shot a take with them, and felt that's it, it can simply not be better than this. How long do you think it takes to pull up a camp of six tents, furnished with everything?
Three hours?...
With blankets, kitchen utensils?... In three and a half minutes. They made the camp disappear. The camera was directed somewhere, but by that time there was hardly anything left, half of it just disappeared.
Is your documentary also about Gypsies?
The main character is not a Gypsy, but we found her when casting the characters of Sitiprinc. We went somewhere where Gypsies working with feathers lived, and this little girl started to tell us about her friends, also telling her own life-story in the meantime. We have never heard anybody tell a story like that! She lives in unbelievable poverty, in fact her family lives in a set of pig-pens, and a little girl in it who tells a story like she told a fairy tale in this madness.
"In Szalonta, where we lived it was a nice place. And that is where my step-father used to beat up.... they always quarrel with my mother and he would beat up my mother.. he put her down on her stomach like this and hit her with his legs and I asked him why he was hitting her? ...Then my father ran with the axe, .... and I had to crawl under the bed..... then he asked me where I was so that he could hit me, too, so that I should die..."
At the age of 12 she learned that her mother was not her sister after all, i.e. that her sister was her real mother, and that her grandfather was her father because the father and his step-daughter laid with each other. And of all this she was telling in a clean jingling voice, in a wondrous way. This fearful story is for them not so fearful after all. "...and then my grandfather and my mother went to eat ice-cream and when they came back my grandmother became very nervous and beat up my mother and it turned out that I was born out of this ice-cream eating. " All this is so inconceivably depressing that I feel that we have every reason to be ashamed of our sufferings and wailings.
The film is entitled A Timeless Tale, because inconceivable worlds mix in it. There is a housing estate, a deaf-and-dumb old man living on gathering, Gypsies selling feathers, carts and a field-guard....everything. And as also this film has feather-selling and other kinds of Romas, it is also about the Gypsies in a way.
