Laszlo Strausz is an associate professor of film studies at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest. His work focuses on contemporary East-Central European screen media, cultural memory, and the politics of film style.
This book argues that hesitation as an artistic and spectatorial strategy connects various screen... more This book argues that hesitation as an artistic and spectatorial strategy connects various screen media texts produced in post-war Romania. The chapters draw a historical connection between films made during the state socialist decades, televised broadcasts of the 1989 Romanian revolution, and films of the new Romanian cinema. The book explores how the critical attitude of new Romanian cinema demonstrates a refusal to accept limiting, binary discourses rooted in Cold War narratives. Strausz argues that hesitation becomes an attempt to overcome restrictive populist narratives of the past and present day. By employing a performative and mobile position, audiences are encouraged to consider conflicting approaches to history and social transformation.
The film studio of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior produced educational and instructional film... more The film studio of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior produced educational and instructional films for more than three decades during the state socialist regime. In this article I present the first findings of my research project that attempts to map the history and the politics of this collection that was discarded by the Ministry and coincidentally found by archivists. Building on the assumption that the actual political-historical shifts taking place in Hungary would be visible on the studio’s output, I identify a trend, the instrumentalization of governmentality, which mirrors some of these changes and shows how motion pictures were used by the state as a tool of persuasion. Instrumentalization, then, refers to the process during which the affective and psychological modes of audience alignment and persuasion used in the discussion of collective, social-political issues shifted towards a technical mode of audiovisual argumentation, where the macropolitical orientation of viewers ceased to be a central goal. The later films focus instead on the stories of individuals and their instrumental-material goals, which both reflects and contributes to the political neutralization of society during the Kádár-years.
This article interprets Jude’s short film through its modernist-realist attitude that I argue is ... more This article interprets Jude’s short film through its modernist-realist attitude that I argue is the distinguishing characteristic of the new Romanian cinema. The seemingly transparent images highlight how the represented social world remains ambiguous, and reflexively foreground the processes in which the hesitant spectator assigns meaning.
Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies, 2016
Márta Mészáros is one of the few women auteurs in the history of cinema with a coherent and appre... more Márta Mészáros is one of the few women auteurs in the history of cinema with a coherent and appreciated body of work. She was the first Hungarian woman to make a feature film in 1968 and her best-known projects, The Girl (1968), Riddance (1973), Adoption (1975), Nine Months (1976), Diary for My Children (1982), and The Foetus (1993) won major film awards (Cannes, Berlin, Chicago, and Venice) and were greeted with enthusiasm by the international press. Though she rejected the label of feminist filmmaker, the Western reception of her films focused on the women’s topics they addressed, on their political intervention, and on their ecriture feminine. More recently, her work has been appreciated for its nuanced approach to Eastern European socialism. Mészáros is insightfully portrayed by Catherine Portuges as a cineast who “consistently addressed the intersections of state ideology, sexuality and everyday life" and the "charged intersections of gender and nationality" (2004: 191).
The rhetoric of discourses in and around current films on Roma-Hungarian interethnic relations pr... more The rhetoric of discourses in and around current films on Roma-Hungarian interethnic relations prevents audiences from positively engaging with Roma characters. My analysis reveals the ways in which the two documentaries broadcast on national Hungarian television on Roma people since 2009 block the channels of identification between viewers and filmic characters. Additionally, this essay examines the rhetoric of the press release issued by the Hungarian Ministry of Public Administration and Justice on the film Just the Wind at the Berlin Film Festival. In the press release the Ministry actively seeks to widen the gap between the racially motivated killing series in 2008 and 2009 against Roma and the filmic representation of the same events, which in fact enables audiences to identify with the victims. I argue that the seemingly different discourses overlap in their efforts to distance the viewer from Roma, thereby contributing to the strengthening of majority society’s prejudices against them.
It is difficult to discover trends in the work of young Hungarian auteur filmmakers about the his... more It is difficult to discover trends in the work of young Hungarian auteur filmmakers about the historical past. However, this does not mean that the new generation of contemporary directors – who started making films in the early 2000s – would not engage with the past at all. The films focusing on the Kádár years and the fall of the state socialist regime in 1989 – and, most importantly, those focusing on how these epochs or events have impacted contemporary Hungarian identities – use different narrative and stylistic strategies and address viewers in diverse ways; mnemonic themes are particularly present in Hungarian cinema.
The grotesque storyline and the hyperrealist visual style of György Pálfi’s 2006 film Taxidermia ... more The grotesque storyline and the hyperrealist visual style of György Pálfi’s 2006 film Taxidermia make it difficult for an international audience to watch it as a critical historical trope. However, under the façade of the film’s comic exaggerations that focus on various bodily obsessions, the director draws a complex image of Hungary’s 20th-century history. Through the story of a family’s three generations, the film depicts how the three main political systems have impacted the ways individuals use their body as a memory site that preserves the traces of dominant political ideologies.
This essay looks at the image of the ship in Péter Forgács’s documentary The Danube Exodus (1999)... more This essay looks at the image of the ship in Péter Forgács’s documentary The Danube Exodus (1999) as a site that enables the viewer to meditate the encounter of the historical Self and the Other. Forgács, who works with the found footage material of an amateur filmmaker, teases out the paradoxical double movement of the historical event, in which both Jewish and German refugees use the river Danube as an escape route in the early phase of World War II, traveling on the same paddle steamer in opposite directions. The documentary about two river-stories directed by an Eastern European filmmaker becomes a contemplation on interconnectedness, national cross-pollination and the inscription of the viewer in these processes. I argue that the film offers its audiences a way to visually and conceptually consider the unfeasibility of historiographic authority.
Laszlo Strausz analyzes Jancsó's shift from an aesthetics of impersonal geometry towards faces in... more Laszlo Strausz analyzes Jancsó's shift from an aesthetics of impersonal geometry towards faces in close-up
Nations and Nationalism: A Global Historical Overview. (eds.) Guthram Herb and David Kaplan. ABC-CLIO. , 2008
The problem of cinema’s relationship to national identity is a complex one. On the one hand, fi... more The problem of cinema’s relationship to national identity is a complex one. On the one hand, film history has traditionally been written as the histories of various national cinemas (French cinema, Iranian cinema, etc.), and indeed the national origin of a film continues to be a major classification device for film festivals. On the other hand, certain national cinemas–particularly Hollywood, and more recently “Bollywood,” the prolific Indian film industry centered in Bombay–reach global audiences and in many nations reach a larger audience than the indigenous national film output. Thus, the extent to which any national cinema can be said to “reflect” or to express a particular national culture is complicated by uneven exchanges in the global flow of images.
Jelen tanulmányban egy olyan elméleti keret felvázolására teszek kísérletet, amelyben a kortárs r... more Jelen tanulmányban egy olyan elméleti keret felvázolására teszek kísérletet, amelyben a kortárs román film sajátosságai értelmezhetővé válnak. Amellett érvelek, hogy a hezitáció fogalma lehetőséget ad ennek az újszerű és koherens nemzeti beszédmódnak az interpretációjára.
A fiatal magyar szerzői játékfilm-rendezők múlthoz való viszonyulása korántsem mutat egységes for... more A fiatal magyar szerzői játékfilm-rendezők múlthoz való viszonyulása korántsem mutat egységes formákat. Ugyanakkor ez nem azt jelenti azt, hogy a 2000-es években megjelenő fiatal rendezői generáció ne foglalkozna a múlttal. A kádári éveket, az államszocialista rezsim bukását, de legfőképp ennek a kortárs magyar identitásra gyakorolt hatását vizsgáló munkák saját útjukat járják, eltérő módokon keresnek fogást a témájukon, nem alkotnak markáns irányzatot, de a mozgóképes emlékezet-téma mégis jelen van a fiatal rendezők munkáiban is.
A posztkoloniális filmelmélet abból az alapfeltevésből indul ki, hogy a mozgókép kifejező eszköze... more A posztkoloniális filmelmélet abból az alapfeltevésből indul ki, hogy a mozgókép kifejező eszköze lehet a különböző nemzetállamok, etnikai, gazdasági vagy társadalmi nemi csoportok identitásának, hatalmi viszonyainak. Ugyanakkor ennél sokkal fontosabb, hogy a mozgóképek nem csak passzívan kifejezhetik a fent említett különbségeket, hanem aktívan hozzá tudnak járulni ezek alakulásához. Nem önmagától értetődő, hogy az eredetileg a nyugat-európai centrum illetve a közel- és a távol-keleti, afrikai periféria között kulturális kapcsolatok leírására vállalkozó posztkoloniális elméletek hogyan kapcsolódnak a volt államszocialista térség filmkultúrájához. Az alábbiakban arra teszek kísérletet, hogy megmutassam: a közép-kelet-európai régió szerzői mozgókép-kultúrájának posztkoloniális megközelítésével fontos elemzési szempontokra tehetünk szert.
Greenaway A rajzoló szerződése és a Jarman Caravaggio című filmjei egyaránt rendezőiknek a képzőm... more Greenaway A rajzoló szerződése és a Jarman Caravaggio című filmjei egyaránt rendezőiknek a képzőművészeti talajba fúródó szondái, az általában vett megismerés küldöttei: a film mint művészi forma saját örökségét, illetve önmagát értelmezi a társművészetté vált előd tükrében. Az ikonikus filmi jel a festészet, illetve a festő lehetséges identitására kérdez... Hogyan lépett be egykor az ecset forradalmi módon a valóságba? Erre Vélasquez 'Az infánsnők' (Les Menines) című festményével kapcsolatban kapunk egyfajta választ. Kézenfekvő az analógia: hogyan lehetséges mindez ma egy kamerával?
This book argues that hesitation as an artistic and spectatorial strategy connects various screen... more This book argues that hesitation as an artistic and spectatorial strategy connects various screen media texts produced in post-war Romania. The chapters draw a historical connection between films made during the state socialist decades, televised broadcasts of the 1989 Romanian revolution, and films of the new Romanian cinema. The book explores how the critical attitude of new Romanian cinema demonstrates a refusal to accept limiting, binary discourses rooted in Cold War narratives. Strausz argues that hesitation becomes an attempt to overcome restrictive populist narratives of the past and present day. By employing a performative and mobile position, audiences are encouraged to consider conflicting approaches to history and social transformation.
The film studio of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior produced educational and instructional film... more The film studio of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior produced educational and instructional films for more than three decades during the state socialist regime. In this article I present the first findings of my research project that attempts to map the history and the politics of this collection that was discarded by the Ministry and coincidentally found by archivists. Building on the assumption that the actual political-historical shifts taking place in Hungary would be visible on the studio’s output, I identify a trend, the instrumentalization of governmentality, which mirrors some of these changes and shows how motion pictures were used by the state as a tool of persuasion. Instrumentalization, then, refers to the process during which the affective and psychological modes of audience alignment and persuasion used in the discussion of collective, social-political issues shifted towards a technical mode of audiovisual argumentation, where the macropolitical orientation of viewers ceased to be a central goal. The later films focus instead on the stories of individuals and their instrumental-material goals, which both reflects and contributes to the political neutralization of society during the Kádár-years.
This article interprets Jude’s short film through its modernist-realist attitude that I argue is ... more This article interprets Jude’s short film through its modernist-realist attitude that I argue is the distinguishing characteristic of the new Romanian cinema. The seemingly transparent images highlight how the represented social world remains ambiguous, and reflexively foreground the processes in which the hesitant spectator assigns meaning.
Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies, 2016
Márta Mészáros is one of the few women auteurs in the history of cinema with a coherent and appre... more Márta Mészáros is one of the few women auteurs in the history of cinema with a coherent and appreciated body of work. She was the first Hungarian woman to make a feature film in 1968 and her best-known projects, The Girl (1968), Riddance (1973), Adoption (1975), Nine Months (1976), Diary for My Children (1982), and The Foetus (1993) won major film awards (Cannes, Berlin, Chicago, and Venice) and were greeted with enthusiasm by the international press. Though she rejected the label of feminist filmmaker, the Western reception of her films focused on the women’s topics they addressed, on their political intervention, and on their ecriture feminine. More recently, her work has been appreciated for its nuanced approach to Eastern European socialism. Mészáros is insightfully portrayed by Catherine Portuges as a cineast who “consistently addressed the intersections of state ideology, sexuality and everyday life" and the "charged intersections of gender and nationality" (2004: 191).
The rhetoric of discourses in and around current films on Roma-Hungarian interethnic relations pr... more The rhetoric of discourses in and around current films on Roma-Hungarian interethnic relations prevents audiences from positively engaging with Roma characters. My analysis reveals the ways in which the two documentaries broadcast on national Hungarian television on Roma people since 2009 block the channels of identification between viewers and filmic characters. Additionally, this essay examines the rhetoric of the press release issued by the Hungarian Ministry of Public Administration and Justice on the film Just the Wind at the Berlin Film Festival. In the press release the Ministry actively seeks to widen the gap between the racially motivated killing series in 2008 and 2009 against Roma and the filmic representation of the same events, which in fact enables audiences to identify with the victims. I argue that the seemingly different discourses overlap in their efforts to distance the viewer from Roma, thereby contributing to the strengthening of majority society’s prejudices against them.
It is difficult to discover trends in the work of young Hungarian auteur filmmakers about the his... more It is difficult to discover trends in the work of young Hungarian auteur filmmakers about the historical past. However, this does not mean that the new generation of contemporary directors – who started making films in the early 2000s – would not engage with the past at all. The films focusing on the Kádár years and the fall of the state socialist regime in 1989 – and, most importantly, those focusing on how these epochs or events have impacted contemporary Hungarian identities – use different narrative and stylistic strategies and address viewers in diverse ways; mnemonic themes are particularly present in Hungarian cinema.
The grotesque storyline and the hyperrealist visual style of György Pálfi’s 2006 film Taxidermia ... more The grotesque storyline and the hyperrealist visual style of György Pálfi’s 2006 film Taxidermia make it difficult for an international audience to watch it as a critical historical trope. However, under the façade of the film’s comic exaggerations that focus on various bodily obsessions, the director draws a complex image of Hungary’s 20th-century history. Through the story of a family’s three generations, the film depicts how the three main political systems have impacted the ways individuals use their body as a memory site that preserves the traces of dominant political ideologies.
This essay looks at the image of the ship in Péter Forgács’s documentary The Danube Exodus (1999)... more This essay looks at the image of the ship in Péter Forgács’s documentary The Danube Exodus (1999) as a site that enables the viewer to meditate the encounter of the historical Self and the Other. Forgács, who works with the found footage material of an amateur filmmaker, teases out the paradoxical double movement of the historical event, in which both Jewish and German refugees use the river Danube as an escape route in the early phase of World War II, traveling on the same paddle steamer in opposite directions. The documentary about two river-stories directed by an Eastern European filmmaker becomes a contemplation on interconnectedness, national cross-pollination and the inscription of the viewer in these processes. I argue that the film offers its audiences a way to visually and conceptually consider the unfeasibility of historiographic authority.
Laszlo Strausz analyzes Jancsó's shift from an aesthetics of impersonal geometry towards faces in... more Laszlo Strausz analyzes Jancsó's shift from an aesthetics of impersonal geometry towards faces in close-up
Nations and Nationalism: A Global Historical Overview. (eds.) Guthram Herb and David Kaplan. ABC-CLIO. , 2008
The problem of cinema’s relationship to national identity is a complex one. On the one hand, fi... more The problem of cinema’s relationship to national identity is a complex one. On the one hand, film history has traditionally been written as the histories of various national cinemas (French cinema, Iranian cinema, etc.), and indeed the national origin of a film continues to be a major classification device for film festivals. On the other hand, certain national cinemas–particularly Hollywood, and more recently “Bollywood,” the prolific Indian film industry centered in Bombay–reach global audiences and in many nations reach a larger audience than the indigenous national film output. Thus, the extent to which any national cinema can be said to “reflect” or to express a particular national culture is complicated by uneven exchanges in the global flow of images.
Jelen tanulmányban egy olyan elméleti keret felvázolására teszek kísérletet, amelyben a kortárs r... more Jelen tanulmányban egy olyan elméleti keret felvázolására teszek kísérletet, amelyben a kortárs román film sajátosságai értelmezhetővé válnak. Amellett érvelek, hogy a hezitáció fogalma lehetőséget ad ennek az újszerű és koherens nemzeti beszédmódnak az interpretációjára.
A fiatal magyar szerzői játékfilm-rendezők múlthoz való viszonyulása korántsem mutat egységes for... more A fiatal magyar szerzői játékfilm-rendezők múlthoz való viszonyulása korántsem mutat egységes formákat. Ugyanakkor ez nem azt jelenti azt, hogy a 2000-es években megjelenő fiatal rendezői generáció ne foglalkozna a múlttal. A kádári éveket, az államszocialista rezsim bukását, de legfőképp ennek a kortárs magyar identitásra gyakorolt hatását vizsgáló munkák saját útjukat járják, eltérő módokon keresnek fogást a témájukon, nem alkotnak markáns irányzatot, de a mozgóképes emlékezet-téma mégis jelen van a fiatal rendezők munkáiban is.
A posztkoloniális filmelmélet abból az alapfeltevésből indul ki, hogy a mozgókép kifejező eszköze... more A posztkoloniális filmelmélet abból az alapfeltevésből indul ki, hogy a mozgókép kifejező eszköze lehet a különböző nemzetállamok, etnikai, gazdasági vagy társadalmi nemi csoportok identitásának, hatalmi viszonyainak. Ugyanakkor ennél sokkal fontosabb, hogy a mozgóképek nem csak passzívan kifejezhetik a fent említett különbségeket, hanem aktívan hozzá tudnak járulni ezek alakulásához. Nem önmagától értetődő, hogy az eredetileg a nyugat-európai centrum illetve a közel- és a távol-keleti, afrikai periféria között kulturális kapcsolatok leírására vállalkozó posztkoloniális elméletek hogyan kapcsolódnak a volt államszocialista térség filmkultúrájához. Az alábbiakban arra teszek kísérletet, hogy megmutassam: a közép-kelet-európai régió szerzői mozgókép-kultúrájának posztkoloniális megközelítésével fontos elemzési szempontokra tehetünk szert.
Greenaway A rajzoló szerződése és a Jarman Caravaggio című filmjei egyaránt rendezőiknek a képzőm... more Greenaway A rajzoló szerződése és a Jarman Caravaggio című filmjei egyaránt rendezőiknek a képzőművészeti talajba fúródó szondái, az általában vett megismerés küldöttei: a film mint művészi forma saját örökségét, illetve önmagát értelmezi a társművészetté vált előd tükrében. Az ikonikus filmi jel a festészet, illetve a festő lehetséges identitására kérdez... Hogyan lépett be egykor az ecset forradalmi módon a valóságba? Erre Vélasquez 'Az infánsnők' (Les Menines) című festményével kapcsolatban kapunk egyfajta választ. Kézenfekvő az analógia: hogyan lehetséges mindez ma egy kamerával?
Uploads
different discourses overlap in their efforts to distance the viewer from Roma, thereby contributing to the strengthening of majority society’s prejudices against them.
different discourses overlap in their efforts to distance the viewer from Roma, thereby contributing to the strengthening of majority society’s prejudices against them.