MAGASISKOLA (The falcons, 95’)
by István Gaál
cast: Ivan Andonov, György Bánnfy, Judit Meszléry
Hungary, 1970
Restoration curated by Hungarian Film Archive
Introduced by Giuseppe Ghigi
Screening in the original language.
“Istvan Gaál, who graduated from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, has drawn one of his most stylistically rigorous and compact films, a bitter parable about power in a concentrationary universe in which men and animals exchange roles. The closing sequence in black and white is memorable, and the soundtrack extremely suggestive. It is one of those films that, though with a purely metaphorical approach, bears witness to the courageous reactive vitality of Hungarian cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in favour of an anti-authoritarian practice, neither dogmatic nor bureaucratic, of socialism in power. The original title meant ‘higher learning”. Special Prize at Cannes.” (Morando Morandini)
The film may be interpreted in two ways: the first, immediate, is about methods for raising birds of prey, which feels almost ecological; the second, new to Gaál, is an allegory about the mechanisms that determine tyranny and submission… For the first time, G. uses colour and he does so with great care (predominant colours are yellow and softer tones) integrating it into the landscape, understood as an expressive component. The relationship between colour, sound (highly studied, even when the choice is silence), the movement of the camera and especially the editing, creates a rhythm, which in its starkness masterfully underscores the degree of violence that is harboured in the characters and situations represented in this film. (Fernaldo Di Giammatteo)
