INTERVIEW WITH MIKLOS JANCSO, THE FAMOUS HUNGARIAN DIRECTOR
I AM HERE AT LAST

Your career has moved along a very interesting path – from the early documentaries and your remarkable achievements in the sixties and seventies, to the latest films with non-linear narration. In what way did you change?

-- I have shot about thirty feature films and around hundred documentaries. I do not think that I have changed much in aesthetical sense, but the transformation was caused by the fact the times changed, and along with it poetical views as well. Once when I worked in Croatia, there were the Croats at the headquarters who were friends and had a good time with the Serbs. I could not even imagine that this occasion would have such a bad point and that would happen what had happened.

Apart from Hungary, you have also worked in China, Italy and some other places. What are your impressions and experience about it?

-- Everything is the same. In the past it depended on politics whether and how a film could be realized, and nowadays everything depends on money.

There is a certain aesthetic and communicative difference between your Hungarian and Italian films?

-- It is very interesting hypothesis. It is probably so.

What could you say about your latest film The Battle of Mohac?

-- You have not seen the film, and I can tell you that – if you are not a Hungarian, then you are a lucky man. In a way it is a deconstruction of the well known historical events, and actually it is my ironic view of those circumstances.

Are you familiar with the new Hungarian film?

-- Young Hungarian directors are very talented and they make good films. It is no wonder – as soon as they are born, they are given cameras. They are very good indeed. And what will become of them later – well, that is the question.

Which Serbian colleagues do you consider to be your friends or poetical soul mates?

-- First of all, Dusan Makavejev and Sasa Petrovic.

Being a Cannes laureate, what does Aleksandar Lifka Prize mean to you?

-- How could you ask me such a question?! It is a great pleasure to me. I have been invited several times, and I am here at last. I have been friend of the Tolnais for a long time, and it is a great honour to be here now.

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