Budapest Tops the 'Nomad List' as Best City for Digital Nomads

In terms if ‘best of’ lists of cities, Budapest usually finds a spot. A lesser known list than, say Conde Nast Travelers top travel-destination list, but one that may be more of a harbinger of a city on the rise, is what’s known as the ‘Nomad List’. That’s a list of cities that are considered best for digital nomads, people who spend their lives traveling for long stretches and working as freelancers, remote workers, or online entrepreneurs. Though the list on nomadlist.com is ever changing according to shifting criteria and metrics, Budapest is currently rated the top city in the world for digital nomads, beating out such perennial nomad favorites as Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Lisbon, Portugal.

photo via Wikipedia

Why does Budapest scratch digital nomads where they itch? Affordability is of course paramount. For workers on international wages, the rents are still reasonable, about half the price of an apartment in a typical US city. Also, the textured culture and nightlife is attractive, as is the broadband, which one nomad described as ‘fast and furious’. Though Budapest is a bit late to catch up to the phenomenon of digital nomadism, there are new co-working spaces spaces opening all the time and serviced apartments that cater to short-term living.

Other than affordability, let’s look at a few other amenities that Budapest digital nomads cite as reasons for making it the top spot to spend time in.

Nightlife: People who won’t be sticking around long appreciate accessible night life. Rooftop films at Corvin Rooftop are a hit, having both a cultural event and club-like atmosphere. Gozsdu Udvar is one-stop shopping for a night of food and fun.

Gozsdu Udvar photo by Thaler Tamas via Wikipedia

Nature: The huge, green spaces like Margit Island are appreciated as places for solo or group yoga, running tracks, and abundant walking spaces. Budapest is a bus ride away from hills for hiking, and caves for caving.

Japanese Garden on Margit Island via Wikipedia

Transport: Though Hungarians and long-term residents alike bemoan the public transport, in reality the wide-reaching and dependable tram, bus, and metro services are great, inexpensive ways to see the city. Nomads who have been in New York, where the subway is constantly breaking down, or Ho Chi Minh City, where you can’t walk for the all the motorbikes, love that Budapest is accessible without a car.

Fancy coffees with a side of Wifi. In particular nomads cite the new Megvető café, owned by the venerable Hungarian publishing house of the same name, and coffee bar Fekete as favorite spots to get work done in.

Classic Budapest: nobody comes to Budapest exclusively for the modern. Travelers love the old-world feel the city is so famous for, not to mention their loyalty to their home cuisine. Both architecture and Hungarian food are much touted by those who spent time here.

Hungarian Gulyás via Wikipedia

Digital nomads are people who left their home to see the world as they work. Having been around, they are a sophisticated and demanding bunch. To land on top of a list curated by such nomads means that not only has Budapest arrived, but worldly travelers have arrived (here) as well.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

Brutal Budapest: Local Examples of Architecture's Most Divisive Trend

The Barbican Center (not in Budapest). via Wikipedia Commons

It doesn’t matter if you think it’s an eyesore, or if you think it’s utilitarian beauty for the ages, the brutalist architecture movement is enjoying a huge wave of popularity. Everyone from hipsters to Millennials to architecture mavens have taken up the brutalist cause with brutalist tours, brutalist Facebook pages, and books devoted to nothing but brutalist architecture. We’ll leave it to the more learned people at ssense.com to give a concise definition of brutalism: “Concrete facades. No decoration. Strict social ethics. Low cost and fast effect. In the period between the 1950s and the 1970s, brutalism was the blue pill of urban planning for communities and town councils across five continents. It allowed municipalities to build social housing and public buildings with a limited budget and a cultural blessing. The godfather of all architects, Le Corbusier, explicitly highlighted the beauty of “brutal matter,” and in general terms, colors and shapes that look great on a concrete background. Moreover, erecting structures in concrete was easy, economical, and functional for the large social housing necessities of expanding cities in the golden age of postwar Western industrialization.”

But not all concrete architecture is brutalist, and not all brutalism is made from concrete, as purists on the web are quick to point out. Brutalism is a bit like pornography: you may not be able to say exactly what qualifies, but you know it when you see it.

Detractors, particularly right leaning or libertarian Americans, call the movement either elitist or socialist, depending on their agenda. There is no doubt that the Russians and former satellite states excelled at brutalism.

Surprisingly (or not) when Budapest decided to renovate Moszkva Square, and rename it Széll Kálmán Square, they went with a concrete brutalist look for the metro stop and surrounding structures. Whether this is forward thinking or retro nostalgia is a matter of opinion.

via BKK

via BKK

Recently torn down Puskás Stadium was much loved for its football games and Metallica concerts but was also derided for its very industrial, hence, cheap, hence, brutalist look. Today’s hyper-modern stadium (not pictured) doesn’t have that problem.

The Budapest Hotel (not to be confused with the Grand Hotel Budapest, which is a different style altogether) is a cylindrical concrete spot for your brutalist Budapest getaway.

via Danubus Hotels

And if you want to get out of Budapest, there’s the retro-wondrous Ezüstpart Hotel in Siofok on the beautiful (or brut-iful?) Lake Balaton.

via szallas.hu

Of course, with its Socialist past, Hungary has some good examples of the brutalist architecture that is so trendy these days (though not as many as one would expect from a post-Bloc country). Above are just a few. If you know of any more drop us a line in the comments.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

Ashton Kutcher: A Budapest Bucket List

Lately, local social media feeds have been a’ flutter with the news that Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis are currently residing in Budapest, while Kunis shoots The Spy Who Dumped Me. Fans have documented Mr. Kutcher food shopping in Buda, near the house they are reportedly renting. As far as we know, this is the actor’s first time in Budapest, so we’ve put together a bucket list of things to do, based on his most popular parts.

In The Butterfly Effect, Kutcher finds himself trapped in multiple alternate realities, and has to rely on his ingenuity and intelligence to set his life straight. With that in mind, one of Budapest’s famous and unique ‘escape rooms’ should be a cinch. This attraction, where the participants must solve puzzles and follow clues in order to escape a locked room, has proven hugely popular with tourists and locals alike. Some ambitious companies are even exporting the idea to other parts of Europe.

In Just Married, Kutcher plays half of a newlywed couple on a disastrous honeymoon in Europe. The pair watches their relationship disintegrate as they trek across France and Italy (yet weirdly misses Budapest). Perhaps things would have turned out much different had they chilled a bit and taken a room at Budapest's Gellért Hotel, famous for their indoor and outdoor thermal baths and wellness center. What could be more relaxing and romantic than a hot bath, massage, and room looking out over the Danube? No amount of arguing can withstand that kind of couples' team building.

via Danubus Hotels

via Wikipedia

Finally, as a nod to Mila Kunis’s most famous role of up-and-coming ballerina Lily in Black Swan, we recommend an evening of ballet at the Hungarian State Opera. One of the city’s most iconic sites and film locations, the State Opera is also home the the Hungarian National Ballet. Kutcher may even catch a performance of Swan Lake, which plays there from time to time. Built in 1884, the State Opera House has nurtured talents like Ferenc (Franz) Liszt, Béla Bartók, and Gustav Mahler. Using 7 kilograms of gold in its interior decorations, it is said to be one of the most beautiful opera houses both inside and out in Europe.

via Wikipedia

via Wikipedia

Ashton Kutcher, the city welcomes you. If you happen to have free time and still find yourself at a loss for what to do, just give us a shout.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

A Hungarian in New York: the Life of Edit Deak

We don’t write much about the Hungarian art world too much here. Perhaps that’s because so much creativity was stifled or re-purposed under the Socialist regime, the affects of which are still lingering. But Hungarians have had a significant influence on the international art scene due mass emigration in the middle of the 20th century. We could bring up artists like Hungarian-born Rita Ackermann, whose drawings of sexualized adolescents earned her a worldwide reputation as being at the forefront of transgressive New York Art.

DeAk with Warhol

And then there were voices like Edit Deak, who spelled her name with a capital ‘A’, making it DeAk. Having fled the Socialist regime in 1968 at age 18, and, after a brief stop in Italy, DeAk very quickly managed to establish herself as a fixture in the downtown New York art scene. As a student at Columbia, she was able to connect with fellow art afictionados and start an art magazine, Art-Rite, that championed difficult art, with DeAk dubbing the effort “coverage for the uncovered”. The magazine was one of the first of its kind to promote video and performance art, street art, and also paid special attention to outsider art, meaning, non art-school trained artists.

via Wikipedia

Moreover, DeAk founded the influential downtown art bookstore and publisher Printed Matter. Through her magazine and other outlets she would champion now mainstream artists like William Wegman, Keith Haring, and even had Jean-Michel Basquiat decorate the walls of her Soho loft. Of course she was also friends with Andy Warhol.

Basquiat's Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump

As a writer she was highly praised, and indeed, other art critics were quick to pick up on the places she was leading, with William Zimmer saying in The SoHo Weekly News: “DeAk has been everywhere before anybody.”  You could say she was a Peggy Guggenheim for outsider art. DeAk died in early June of this year, and was mourned widely, though her passing garnered little notice in her home country.

Source material: New York Times.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

Bizarre Foods get Real in Budapest

We love it when TV hosts from abroad come to Budapest to sample the culture and cuisine, then present it back to the world like a new discovery from some distant, unknown land. They all assume a similar attitude when confronted with a kitchen that is so different than that of its Slavic and Balkan neighbors: awestruck, confounded, impressed, and relived all at once. This is particularly true when it comes to famous cooks and foodhounds who are profiling Hungarian cuisine while trying to get their mouth around a fat véres huka (blood sausage), while forcing their tongue to do the acrobatics required to pronounce the Hungarian language.

This is true of American Andrew Zimmern, who hosts the popular show Bizarre Foods on US cabal TV's Travel Channel. Maybe it is because he is on his second trip to Budapest that he has forsaken such ‘bizarre’ delicacies as kakashere pörkölt (rooster testicle stew) and zúza pörkölt (gizzard stew) in favor of more conventional Hungarian dishes like stuffed cabbage and chicken paprikash (the only bizarre thing here is that they are not more popular worldwide).

Chicken paprikash

That said, the host does make an effort to cover the range of price points, from a ‘street food’ lángos (fried dough) to a pricey dessert cake called Solmóli galuska from the city’s one-time most esteemed restaurant, Gundel.  In the in-between space we see visits to local treasure Rosenstein, where traditional Hungarian Jewish cuisine is served; to a hip new ‘Party District’ restaurant called Getto Gulyas that specializes in old-school Hungarian goulash and stews.

Somlói galuska

One of those interviewed proclaims that there is a ‘culinary revolution’ underway in Budapest. And he is right. Old dishes are being revamped for modern tastes, while Hungarian Millennials are seeing the value local cuisine as street food. It is fair to say that the the food scene reflects the city as a whole: vibrant, traditional, progressive, and always inventive.

We invite you to have a look at the latest Budapest installment of Bizarre Foods, which can be consumed in bite-sized portions below.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

Cityscape Budapest: the Mesmerizing Drawings of Stefan Bleekrode

used by permission of the artisit

If you look at Stefan Bleekrode’s drawings of Budapest, it’s impossible not to also imagine the artist squinting into a photograph of the cityscape and painstakingly recreating the streets and buildings in inky analog. But would you be surprised to learn that the artist relies on nothing but memory when rendering the intricate details of Budapest? Without this nugget of information, the drawings would still be amazing. Instead they are a unique wonder, like a trick produced by the slight of hand of a practiced magician.

Budapest is but one location of the series he calls Cityscapes, which also includes cites like Paris, New York, and London. In the Budapest drawings, we find such blue-chip locations as Keleti train station, Parliament, and Margaret Bridge, though he told us he is currently working on a new drawing of Budapest called Budapest at Night.

used by permission of the artist

At age 30, Dutch artist Bleekrode has been training his memory and talent for drawing since he was a child, as he told odditycentral.com.  “At the age of 10 I wanted to recapture my impressions of places in France and Belgium I’d visited during a holiday the previous summer. Where I lived there was very little that pleases the eye – just 1960’s housing estates and offices. By doing these small pencil drawings I could drift back to those sunny and inspiring places where the world was colorful and eager to be explored. I continue to do the Cityscape drawings for as long as I enjoy it or until I run out of ideas.”

used by permission of the artist

We expect Budapest to imprint itself of people’s memories, but this surprised us. Bleekrode is entirely self taught, which makes the feat all the more amazing. Our curiosity peaked, we contacted the artist, who made himself available to answer a few questions in a recent interview with Flatpack Films.

FPF: What about Budapest appealed to you as an artist?

In terms of artistic appeal, I find Budapest a fascinating city because, unlike most other cities in Europe, it is truly impressive, beautiful and distinctly different. The wide Danube crossing through the city in a gentle curve defines Budapest's two sided appearance, hilly, historic and green on the Buda side and imposing, stellar and energetic on the Pest side. In between a number of beautiful bridges connects these two halves. In particular Pest stands out for me as one massive monument to the great economic and artistic revival of the 2nd half of the 19th century, nowhere this seems to be more visible and so well retained as in Budapest. The combination between delicate, shapely and so often original architecture and the strict geometry of the city's layout I find most appealing for my work.

FPF: How did you train your memory to draw such complicated scenes? Or do you just have a photographic memory?

By focusing so strongly on the visible world around us and using this collected bulk of information in my artwork, I am convinced this trained my memory and made it easier for me to see and retain more details than let's say ten years before. But I always preferred images over written stuff or sounds, as a child I loved looking at picture books but didn't care very much about novels or music. Later on however I realised I could use my 'pictoral' memory also to memorise place names or to learn languages with greater ease. Even Hungarian doesn't seem to daunting for me!

FPF: Have you ever gone back and compared your pictures to the actual view?

Certainly, but I never intend to make an exact replica of existing cities, much more it's a composite view, an amalgamation of many impressions to recreate as truthfully as possible what I enjoyed and how a felt a bout a certain place. But I'm working on a Budapest at Night picture and that one must be fairly realistic.

FPF: How did you find Budapest as a city, independent of your artistic endeavor?

Budapest very much seems to me like some kind of boomtown again, it's very energetic, much more so than many (better known) cities in western Europe. Which greatly surprises me every time I go there because it's the capital of a fairly small country nowadays. Other than that I find it very safe, functional and surprisingly liveable for a city of 2 million. And to me it feels relaxed as well, mainly because of the spa's I suppose. On the downside there's a lot of work that still needs to be done, some areas remain a bit grim but I'm convinced it will look great in the future as well.

used by permission of the artisit

used by permission of the artist

To see more of the artist’s Cityscapes, have a look here.

We expect Budapest to imprint itself of people’s memories, but this surprised us. Bleekrode is entirely self taught, which makes the feat all the more amazing. 

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

A Hungarian From History: The Remarkable Life of Tibor Déry

Hungarian literature – now more than ever – has managed to take a prominent place on the world literature stage, while at the same time remaining distinctly Hungarian. It’s fair to say that there has been a rush on Hungarian writers in the German and particularly English language markets. All that said, there are still any number of fantastic Hungarian writers whose work has not been fully explored outside of the Hungarian language.

For example, there is Tibor Déry, who philosopher Georg Lukács praised as being “the greatest depicter of human beings of our time”. The Hungarian satirist, whose novel, Képzelt riport egz amerikai popfesztiválról (An Imaginary Report on an American Pop Festival),  should have international appeal, as it is based on the Rolling Stones' notorious Altamont concert, where the Hell’s Angels biker gang took over security, and were subsequently accused of assaulting audience members before stabbing one to death during the Stones’ set. The novel was popular enough in Hungary that it was adapted into a musical production, which was staged in Berlin before touring in Europe and, in 1986, finding its way to Albany New York, where it was presented in English with an American cast. Yet nobody has taken it upon themselves to translate and publish that book. His classic novel, the 1200-page tome An Unfinished Sentence, also remains untranslated.

Born in 1894, the writer was persecuted throughout his adult life for his support for Communist causes and the political affiliations they brought. Indeed, he was exiled in 1919 for his views. Upon return to Hungary, he was imprisoned for translating Andre Gide into Hungarian. Towards the end of his life, Déry turned his back on Stalin’s brand of communism, and was expelled from the Hungarian Communist Party in 1953. During this period, Déry was imprisoned again, and sentenced to nine years for his writings and participation in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In support of Déry, artists and writers worldwide registered local protests, including: Picasso, Camus, Satre, Bertrand Russell, and E.M. Forster.

Déry died in 1977. Compared to greats like Bruno Schultz and Anton Chekov, Déry's has yet to receive the recognition of either of those writers. But he hasn’t gone totally ignored. Dery’s most popular novel, Niki: the Story of a Dog, is still in print, in its 1954 English translation, and his short story collect Love and Other Stories was put out in English on New Directions in 2005. But it is possible that his greatest and most accessible works are slipping us by.

For those courageous enough, below is thesoundtrack to the musical based on Déry's book An Imaginary Report on an American Pop Festival, with music by Hungarian band Locomotiv GT.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

2017 Cannes Film Festival: Hungarians at the Gate

Cannes has been good to Hungarian films in recent years, with efforts like Son of Saul, which of course won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2015. In this, the 70th incarnation of the Cannes Film Festival, we see three Hungarian films entered in three different categories.

In the main competition, we find director Kornél Mundruczó’s feature Jupiter's Moon. The director is no stranger to Cannes, with his last feature White God winning the Un Certain Regard prize in 2014. A magic realist tale that follows the friendship of a refugee and a Hungarian local, Jupiter's Moon is the director’s fifth (fifth!) trip to the festival. He was quoted in the Budapest Business Journal as saying  “Jupiter’s Moon is set in a world where we have lost our moral handles/grip. We are falling. We have forgotten to look outside. In the Europe of our ages, amidst such life-changing situations as the refugee crisis, we have no compass for making the appropriate decisions. I am the most interested in whether there is a mutual belief that could tie us together. Is there salvation? What can give us hope in the worst of times?”

Screenshot from Jupiter's Moon via Screen Daily

Indiewire gave high praise to the film’s direction and cinematography (by Marcell Rév): “Even the film’s lone car chase is a breathless experience, as Rév and Mundruczó strap a camera on the hood of a high-powered sedan and lead us on a winding, high-speed drive that always seems framed for maximum impact. These people are the film’s true miracle workers, and they could turn Hollywood upside down if given half a chance (a Marvel movie backed by this sort of talent would be a genuine game-changer).”

In the Un Certain Regard category, we can find Out, by Hungarian/Slovak György Kristóf. Out features an ethnic Hungarian/Slovak engineer who leaves home for Latvia to look for a better life, and some good fishing. There he lands work in a shipyard, and has to deal with xenophobia and a taxidermied rabbit. It is Kristof’s debut feature film. Daily Variety praised the pic’s performances, humor and look, saying “The visuals are among the film’s strongest suit.”

Screenshot from Out via the Czech Film Center

Finally, the short Invisibly by Áron Szentpéteri was selected as one of the sixteen film school films in the Cinéfondation category. The Hungarian National Film Fund, which also provided much of the funding for Jupiter’s Moon, describes the film as such: “Two everyday people meet in the dark. The darkness of an invisible exhibition. Through the film we follow them as they get closer and move apart from each other by crossing blurry boundaries. Boundaries that exist between and within people and are mostly invisible. Not only for the blind.” Szentpéteri attends the famous Hungarian University of Theater and Film Arts in Budapest.

Prizes will be announced on May 26, 27 and 28. Good luck to all the films - especially the Hungarian ones - being screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

The Seductive Stairwells of "Time Machine"

Budapest has gotten a lot of press for its architecture, which runs from Venetian Gothic to Art Nouveau, to Bauhaus. Many styles are at work, contributing to the city's diverse feel: at once classic and modern. And there is no shortage of great photography on the topic, as the buildings are quite photogenic. But not many artists have stepped through the front door and documented the oftentimes striking interiors. Balint Alovits, a young Hungarian photographer, has done just that, and came away with what everyone can agree is a fascinating series of stairwells, which he entitled “Time Machine”.  Yatzer.com described the series as “an homage to perfect geometry, repetitive shapes and perspective forms.” Designboon.com puts a finer point on it: “the visual effect generated is achieved in all of them, no matter to which period of time they belong to. The works create a new dimension by splitting space and time while staying within the visual limits of the project’s concept. And although the images do talk about specific architectural movements, the spiral present in all of them continuously evokes the idea of infinity.”

Indeed, many of the photos could also be compared to a vivisection of a snail or sea shell. The funneling effect is hypnotic: it would be easy to imagine a scene from a Hitchcock film incorporating such perspective. It just goes to show that Budapest, as much as it has been shot and photographed, is still rife with undiscovered locations and unique perspectives.

Below is a selection from "Time Machine".

All photos used with permission. You can find more on Balint Alovits at his website here.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

Budapest Street Scenes: Street Photography from Days Past

Street photography has been a speciality in Budapest and Hungary since the invention of portable hand-held cameras. At least one of the world’s most innovative and influential street photographers, Brassai (born in Transylvania as Gyula Halász) was Hungarian; and of course there is Robert Capa (born in Budapest as Endre Friedmann ) who, though best known for his iconic war photography, was also an accomplished street photographer.

With Hungary’s strong roots in street photography, it’s no surprise that there are also excellent photographers who didn’t move to Western Europe. Photo archives in Budapest are rife with street scenes from the country’s rich and embattled past. Photographers like János Müllner and Gyula Schäffer took advantage of Budapest’s lively street life, curious inhabitants, and varied architecture to create a body of work that is unique and accomplished.

Below enjoy a selection of street photographers past and present, many of which are of the collection of Budapest’s Kiscelli Museum.

Main Boulevard, 1956, Gyula Nagy, collection of the Kiscelli Museum

1936, unknown photographer, collection of the Kiscelli Museum

Civil Defense Drill, 1940, Dezső Orelly, collection of the Kiscelli Museum

1945, via MTI, unknown photographer, collection of the Kiscelli Museum

Rákóczi Square, 1937, Gyula Schäffer, collection of the Kiscelli Museum

Firewood shortage, 2019, collection of the Kiscelli Museum

Jewish Street Celebration, 1911, János Müllner, collection of the Kiscelli Museum

Beyond the Balcony No.14, 1996, Illés Barna

Déak Square, 2006, Krisztina Erdei

Óbuda, Szőlő Street, 1995, Lenke Szilágyi

Lehel Square, 2010, Máté Bartha

Rákóczi Street, 2014, Gulyás Miklós

If you are lucky enough to be in Budapest, you can find these street photos and more at a temporary exhibition at the Kicselli Museum. Entitled “IMAGE SCHEMA – The History of Street Photography in Budapest from the Beginning to Present” the exhibition is on display through June 26.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

Shobha Nehru, the Life of a Hungarian in India

It sometimes happens that we stumble across a life so dramatic that it seems worthy of film itself. Such is the case with Shobha Magdolna Friedmann Nehru, a Hungarian Jew who escaped Hungary before the Holocaust, married into one of India’s most prominent political families, was active in social causes, and lived well past 100.

‘Fora’ as she was known, was born on Dec. 5, 1908, into a wealthy Hungarian Jewish family that had changed its name from Friedmann to Forbath in order to better assimilate into Budapest society. Anti-semitic laws later forced the family to change it back, as they witnessed pogroms aimed at killing Jews and discouraging the rising wave of Communism. In Nehru’s childhood days, the otherwise scenic route to Lake Balaton became littered with hanged bodies.

Unable to enter a Hungarian university as a Jew, she went abroad to the London School of Economics, where she met her future husband, fellow student B. K. Nehru. Despite misgivings from both families, they married and moved to India. Not long after, her own family was forced to give up the family home, separate, and scatter in many directions in order to escape the Germans.

Not much of her childhood identity remained after she moved to India but for her nickname “Fora.” She was a woman who was able to take on the roll of Indian wife and matriarch, assimilating into new new family and Indian culture almost completely.

In India, Nehru became a mother and a quiet humanitarian. She was befriended by Indira Ghandi, who was in fact her second cousin. Nehru rose to the occasion when she thought human rights were being rolled back under Ghandi’s reign as Prime Minister. She pressed the leader to reverse a policy of sterilization that was being imposed on local men.

She later played a part in helping Hindu refugees who were fleeing the partition of Pakistan, opening crafts shops that sold the wares of refugee women. The idea was replicated across India as the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, and survives today.

It was not until 1949, after the World War II ended, that she returned to Hungary, with her three children in tow. There she reacquainted herself with the city, only to hear tales of death and destruction.

Later in life, as the wife of a high-level dignitary, Mrs. Nehru moved from Washington, to the northeastern state of Assam. From there they moved to London. Testimony indicates thatthoughts of Hungary’s Jews remained with her throughout her life. It was reported that at official receptions, she refused to shake hands with the German ambassador.

Shobha Magdolna Friedmann Nehru died earlier this week at age 108. She was a rare bridge between the disparate cultures of Hungary and India, and a rare person.

Source: the New York Times

Local Spotlight: the Best of the Latest in Hungarian Film-making

It’s true that every year there is a crop of locally made films that are promising and make ripples internationally by winning prizes at film festivals and awards ceremonies. Some, most notably Son of Saul, have gone onto become global phenomena. This year is starting out with exceptional promise on the local front, with several Hungarian language films showing great promise, and a few bringing home prizes from major film festivals.

First is Nyalintás Nesze, or, the Noise of Licking, by animator Nadja Andrasev, which won a joint third prize at the Cannes Cinefondation programme awards for the best works submitted by film students. The nine-minute digital animation was based on the short story “Forgiveness” by Hungarian writer Ádám Bodor, and was completed while the director was still a student at Moholy Nagy, a prominent Budapest art school. Granted, this is from last year, but we like it enough to include it anyway. You can see the preview here:

Next is a film that enjoyed a huge success at the Berlin Biennale, winning the Golden Bear. That is of course On Body and Soul by Hungarian film-maker Ildikó Enyedi. By all accounts it was an underdog, but the ‘dramedy’ impressed audiences and judges with its sensitive treatment of two slaughterhouse employees who are comically/tragically drawn to each. The synopsis, as per Cineruopa is: "What would happen if you met someone who dreamt the same as you or, to be more precise, had been meeting you in the same world every night for years? Would you be pleased? Or would you feel that you had been in some way robbed? And what if this specific individual didn’t exactly appeal to you? What if you actually hated that person?" These are all good questions, and apparently the judges were pleased with the answers, as the film also picked up three other awards from Berlin's independent juries, including best film honors from FIPRESCI, the association of international film critics. Critics also responded well to the pic. The Hollywood Reporter called the movie “quirky, deadpan and sometimes rather brutal,” while Daily Variety said the film “blends mournfully poetic whimsy with stabs of visceral brute reality.” See the (Hungarian language) preview here:

Recently released the film Állampolgár, or, The Citizen, won best screenplay at the Porto Fantasporto Film Festival, Best Drama at San Jose Cinequest, and the Students’ Choice Award at the the Den Haag Movies that Matter Festival. Directed by Roland Vranik, the feature-length film tells the story of an African refugee’s quest to become an ideal Hungarian citizen. The film has received fantastic reviews locally and is generating a buzz on the film festival circuit. Shot with non-professional actors, and supported by the Hungarian Film Fund, the movie appears to be set to have a life beyond Hungary. The Hungarian trailer can be found below:

And of course there was this year’s biggest success as awards go, "Mindenki" or “Sing”, which won the Oscar for best Foreign Language short. Kristof Deák’s film revolves around a new student at a Hungarian primary school who finds a way to stand up to a choral instructor, an authoritative figure seeking to silence her in order to better win a prize trip abroad. The Oscar nomination is one more laurel for the film, which already won the Grand Prize at the Short Shorts Film Festival in Tokyo and Best Short Film at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival as well as several other international honors. Preview below:

While its wonderful to see so many large-scale productions coming to Hungary to take advantage of expert crews and superbly priced production and locations, it’s equally gratifying to know that the local scene is thriving, and only getting better.

In Invitation to the Launch of Man in the Landscape by Attila Lóránt

That means you are invited to the launch party for multi-award winning photographer, director, artistic director, and founder of the Disappearing Cultures Foundation, Attila Lóránt's book entitled Man in the Landscape. That's April 22 at 2 in the afternoon at the Hungarian Museum of Natural Sciences, located on Ludovika Square 2-6 in Budapest's Eight District. The event will feature an opening speech by former Hungarian president László Sólyom, as well as an introductory word by museum director Dr. Zoltán Korsós.

The book of photographs comprises the results of Lóránt's three-year mission to photograph all ten of Hungary's national parks. The artist found particular satisfaction in photographing not just the varied landscapes of the different territories, but also the people who live within or attend to their preservation. He has taken the approach that man himself, and the rural way of life of many of these people who inhabit these areas, is as much an endangered species as the wildlife. The other non-human species he documented are the famous Hungarian Gray cattle, buffaloes, Racka sheep, cows, horses, and other indigenous animals and livestock.

The author began his work as a photographer back in 1992, and since then has published seven books which have been translated into multiple languages. He has had over 70 exhibitions of his work worldwide. Lóránt was the first Hungarian photographer to have his work published under the auspices of the National Geographic Society, with this being his third title for the imprint. He also founded and owns one of the market leaders in post production, Post-Edison Graphics.

So if you are in Budapest, come on out to the event! For more information on the book and its author, see the site for the Disappearing Cultures Foundation.

Celebrity Chef Showdown: Battleground Budapest

They trade barbs in the media, snipe at each other’s styles and TV shows, and genuinely seem to dislike one another. Is Budapest about to become the next battleground in the war between Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey, two reigning titans of the culinary world?

That the local foodie scene here is booming, with Hungarian chefs pulling Michelin stars down from the skies and bringing home prizes in international competitions, is well covered, but it is less known that international brand-name celebrity chefs are staking out territory in our city. It started with the opening of Nobu, the Budapest outlet of the famous Japanese/American sushi house created by Nobuyuki "Nobu" Matsuhisa. Then Jamie Oliver arrived with Jamie’s Italian opening last year in the Castle District. This wouldn’t have gone un-noticed by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey, whose food empire includes restaurants all around the globe and multiple kitchen-centric reality TV shows. The rivalry between Oliver and Ramsey is long and bitter. Ramsey with his testosterone infused, alpha-male approach to running a kitchen is naturally at odds with Oliver’s more sensitive, humble personality. Ramsey is Vegas, Oliver is an organic garden.

via Wikipedia

To much fanfare, Oliver, with a local investment group, opened Jamie’s Italian, beating the ever-expanding Ramsay to the punch in getting a share of the Budapest pie. Though popular, it hasn’t exactly lit the culinary scene on fire here to the degree that it would discourage the competition. But in truth, Ramsay has been circling around Hungary for some time, initially as a site for a culinary school and label of Tokaj wine. Though that has yet to come to fruition, he was recently slated to return to the city to make an appearance at a new DIY restaurant, the ultra-hip Makery, offering a tweet suggesting as such. While we have no evidence he kept that appointment, we believe it is only a matter of time before his empire extends to Budapest. Will he opt for the fast-moving Pest or more staid Buda? Only time will tell, but we have our ears to the ground and nose to the wind here. In this celebrity chef showdown, we can only benefit.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

Longread: The Norwegian Carpenter who Chose a New Homeland

By Krisztián Nyári

It was by coincidence that a poor Norwegian young man, Guilbrand Gregersen, ended up in Hungary shortly before the revolution of 1848. Soon after that he offered not only his heart but also his workforce to Hungary. Although he withstood several strokes of fate, he was able to stand back on his feet in all circumstances.

If Austrian railway workers had not stolen the baggage of a young Norwegian, the Parliament, Keleti and Nyugati Railway Stations, Mathias Church, the city centre of Szeged, as well as a number of bridges and public buildings in Hungary would look totally different today. Twenty-three-year-old Guilbrand (Gudbrand) Gregersen arrived in Central Europe in the hope of finding well-paid construction jobs and in spring 1847 he left Prague on foot for Vienna, from where he intended to move on to Munich by train. He had no money for a train ticket but he did send his luggage forward by train. His modest trunk was hiding clothes and a few personal items brought from home. Arriving in Vienna, he immediately went to the customs office for his luggage. When he opened the trunk, all he saw was a couple of bricks, rags and straw in it. Gregersen was embittered by the fact that he had been robbed. His friends were just about to have some entertainment in the imperial city but he would not join them wearing the worn-out working clothes. He heard about the construction works in Pest-Buda and he decided to try his luck in the unknown city by the Danube bend and earn enough money to buy new clothes. Parting with his friends, he said he would meet them in Munich within half a year.

Keleti railway station and Baross Square in the early 1930s.

Photo: Ted Grauthoff

In the end he spent 63 years in Hungary, where he became an officer in the national army in the War of Independence and later one of the most significant entrepreneurs in the country, who participated in almost all major construction projects during the age of dualism. In the meantime he went bankrupt and once he lost all his wealth in a fire but he always stood up and started it all from scratch. He died as a Hungarian nobleman and the biggest taxpayer in Budapest; there were legends about his honesty at a time when construction works were accompanied by corruption scandals.

It was not at the construction sites in Pest that he found work as he had planned but at the prolongation of the railway line between Pest and Vác, also recorded by the poet Petőfi. In autumn 1847 he was working in Upper Hungary, now part of Slovakia, and he soon received his first independent task to build a smaller wooden bridge. In the following more than half a century there were hardly any railway development works he did not participate in personally.

We do not know what made the Norwegian businessman, who could not say a word in Hungarian at the beginning and was much more at ease in the company of Austrians and Germans, side with the rebellious Hungarians in 1848. Whatever the case, he joined the national army as a volunteer and served as a sapper officer in an engineering corps. His expertise and commitment are both proved by the fact that he built the pontoon bridge near Pask, indispensable for the military operations in Western Hungary, in a record one-and-a-half days. After the War of Independence was crushed, he also thought it better to flee the country. He headed for Italy, where he worked on the construction of a bridge over the Piave. He could have stayed longer or traveled further on but he intended to settle down in Hungary. After his return he took part in the construction works of the Esztergom-Párkány railway line and it was as a result of this commission that he found himself in Szob, where he bought a plot and built a house from his saved earnings. In 1852 he met the local butcher’s daughter, Alojzia Sümeg, whom he married in the same year.

The couple spoke German at home and knowing this language was sufficient for work, too. However, Gregersen found it important to learn Hungarian and he wrote the Hungarian words to be learnt during the day on a black slate board so that he could glance at it as he walked about. He would not prove successful in this one thing: he spoke the language of his chosen homeland with mistakes and a strong accent even at the end of his life. Not so his children, who learnt Hungarian in addition to German and Norwegian at a young age. Thus Hungarian words were more and more often uttered in the Gregersen house: from 1854 a total of 19 children were born to the couple and 12 of them reached adulthood.

When he felt he had taken root in Hungary for good, he attracted his brothers to his new homeland, too. The first major independent work of the family business was building the railway bridge by Szolnok, ensuring connection between Pest and Debrecen. Built in 1857, the 500-metre-long structure spanning over several riverbeds and flood basins qualified as the largest wooden railway bridge in the country at the time. The Norwegian master builder and his brothers, known for their fast, accurate and cheap work, were then employed to build dozens of railway lines, more than thirty railway bridges, a number of tunnels and several railway stations. The caisson foundation, first applied in Central Europe by the Gregersens while constructing the bridge in Szeged, making it possible to build foundations in wet riverbeds, was considered a technical miracle. The way he solved the design of the railway tunnel starting at Déli railway station in Buda, which withstood the load until these days, was also an outstanding feat.

Help in trouble

Gregersen was not yet considered a particularly rich man when he felt he had to thank Hungary in some way for accepting him. In 1860 his name was among those aristocrats and bankers who donated some of their wealth for the construction of the Hungarian Academy of Science. Later, he coninued offering significant amounts for charity purposes. When he had accumulated enough capital, he purchased a plot in Lónyay Street in Ferencváros, where he first established a wood depot and joinery factory and later a windmill. His business was so prosperous that when the first Transylvanian railway was constructed, he participated in the works not only as a contractor but also as a shareholder of the investment company.

And then he went bankrupt within a matter of days. As a result of a stock market crash, construction projects came to a halt so Gregersen also became insolvent. Not wanting to be in debt with his subcontractors, he paid and almost all his wealth went up in smoke. It seemed he had to give up his dreams of founding a company. However, he contacted his previous business partners and he took up minor loans from them instead of the banks. As there were legends going around about his honesty, they were happy to lend him and he duly repaid the loans within a few years. His situation had just normalised when in 1870 his entire wood depot burnt down in a huge fire. He rebuilt everything and then all of it burnt down yet again in 1875. Others would have given up long before but he managed to stand up even after this.

The railway construction fever was followed by the decades of developing the new capital, Budapest, when he participated in the construction of Mathias Church, the Museum of Fine Art and the Opera House. When a new avenue was built in the capital, the residents of the palaces along the way did not wish to hear the rattle of horse carts on the cobblestones. As a solution, the Gregersen factory produced tens of thousands of wooden bricks, which were used to cover the main road now called Andrássy Road. The company then cooperated in building Nyugati railway station, designed by the Eiffel Office from Paris, and participated in the construction of the National Theatre. In 1875 he built the family’s palace in Lónyay Street not far from his factory. The equipment of the two-storey, Neo-Renaissance building, decorated with frescoes by Károly Lotz, was 20-30 years ahead of its time: bathrooms, water closet toilets and food lifts served the comfort of its residents.

The building of the National Theatre

Gregersen did not deplete his business revenues nor would he take it to the stock market due to his bad experiences: he used to profit from his companies to purchase plots in the outskirts of Budapest. Within a few decades he owned a substantial part of Ferencváros and Angyalföld quarters and as the city grew the value of his plots also soared. It is to prove both his enormously increased wealth and his honesty that he was the biggest taxpayer in the capital as early as in 1873. At the construction sites he controlled, he sometimes employed tens of thousands of people simultaneously. His approach to business is well demonstrated by the fact that he most probably did not earn a penny on the work that brought him national fame. When the flooding Tisza ruined the city centre of Szeged in 1879, Gregersen did not hesitate to offer his services for the rescue operations. First he had temporary wooden houses built for the thousands of families who suffered flood damage and then he removed the water from the inundated city centre using his special pumps. He employed 3,000 people, who loaded 160 horse carts and 84 railway carriages daily with earth, with which they filled up the low-lying areas and erected circular dykes around the city. The works lasted for three years and Gregersen’s expenses exceeded the previously estimated budget so the operations were concluded with a loss. The writer Kálmán Mikszáth, who at the time worked as a journalist in Szeged, set the Norwegian from a faraway land as an example in one of his articles as opposed to the local entrepreneurs wishing to make a profit even on the disaster. But appraisal arrived from elsewhere, too: King Franz Joseph granted noble rank to the Norwegian peasant boy.

Son of two countries

If anyone wished to boast with the achievements of the Hungarian construction industry before the beginning of the 20th century, they mostly listed works completed by Gregersen’s company: they were involved in building the Opera House just as in constructing the Elizabeth Bridge. In Fiume, they built the largest harbour of wooden structure in the world at the time but they also received orders in Prague and Bosnia. This required the establishment of subsidiaries but Gregersen kept managing the company in the traditional way as a kind of patriarch. On special occasions he would listen to the concert given by the brass band formed by the factory workers and the employees received presents from him at Christmas. In his elder years he returned to his native land on several occasions and he bought an estate and a farm house there. He is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Norwegian technical higher education, for which purpose he donated huge amounts of money. Several times he was received by the king and the prime minister of Norway, which seceded from Sweden in 1905, and he conversed with them in the rural dialect he had brought from his village. He could always reconcile his Norwegian and Hungarian identities; he was a major multinational entrepreneur, a Hungarian nobleman and a Norwegian peasant at the same time. He never retired from work: even over the age of 80 he regularly traveled to sites in the countryside to check the progress of the work in person.

Border crossing at the Elizabeth Bridge in Komárom

On Christmas Eve in 1910 Guilbrand Gregersen of 86 years presented his family members and employees in his house in Szob as usual and he even told them a Christmas poem in Norwegian. He arranged some milk loaf and wine to be sent to the policeman stationed at the corner and then retired to his room for the night. He could be righteously proud to have transformed the image of his chosen homeland with his two hands and his talent in six decades. Fresh in mind and healthy in body, he went to sleep forever.

For a short time after his death it seemed that the company inherited by his family kept developing vigorously: they received a request from the Turkish government to modernise the sea port in Constantinople. There was no way to implement the work though; the world war broke out and peaceful construction investments were soon halted everywhere. The construction industry withered during the recession after the war; moreover, the Transylvanian, Upper Hungarian and Bosnian wood depots of the company were suddenly in foreign land. And as there was no one to start anew despite all difficulties, in 1921 the owners of Gregersen G. and Sons Construction Company decided to wind up the company. The winding-up process lasted for decades while the family lived from utilising and gradually selling the vast real estate holdings. They had properties left to be expropriated even in 1951, from where the last living daughter and grandchild of the emigrant Norwegian were evicted by the Rákosi regime.

The whole article can be read in the March 2017 edition of BBC History.

Photos via Fortepan

Location Spotter: the Budapest Eye

Like it or not, the city-scape of Budapest is changing. Though there are strict zoning regulations that prohibit skyscrapers, there is still much renovation underway of old buildings, along with new, more modern, structures rising from the streets. Perhaps one of the more controversial new additions to downtown is the Budapest Eye, the enormous Ferris wheel situated on Erzsébet Square. Once a seasonal, warm-weather attraction, if reports are true, it is set to be a year-round fixture. While it is considered an eyesore to some, others appreciate the whimsy and playfulness of having an amusement-park ride in the middle of downtown Budapest.

The wheel, modified from the Eye of past years, comprises 41 cabins and rises to an impressive 65 meters high at its peak. That makes it taller than many of the surrounding buildings. As of last year, it was the tallest in Europe, though we cannot confirm if this is still the case. From its top vantage point, the ride affords a unique view of such other Budapest locations as Andrássy Avenue, the Basilica, and the Castle, across the Danube.

Ferris wheel enthusiasts (and, yes, there are many) will note that there is a Hungarian connection to the contraption’s invention, at least as far as Hungary’s Habsburg past is concerned. The Wiener Riesenrad in Vienna, while not the first Ferris wheel ever, was one of the first to function as a permanent ride, and the first in Europe, was constructed in 1897, and was only half a meter shorter than the Budapest Eye.  

Is the Eye an eye-sore? Even the Eiffel Tower was considered an abomination to the Paris skyline when it was erected. So only time will tell if the ‘Eye’s have it.

* All photos via Wikipedia Commons

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

Celeb Spotter: Budapest Suits Gosling

Though Ryan Gosling wasn’t the man around town the way some actors are when they come to Budapest, during the shoot for Blade Runner II he did get out enough to have an opinion about our…baked goods, which he touted on an American talk show (his own words were that our 'bread game is very strong'. True, in terms of baked goods, nobody will walk away from Hungary disappointed, as we have all the basic cakes, pies and other delicacies covered. But the actor did get out enough to manage time to hastily (perhaps too hastily?) shoot a promo for the fashion magazine GQ that allows one to place him in the context of 'classic' Budapest. We pass the video along, not because it is an outstanding watch, but because it makes a lot of the film-noirish feeling so many locations here have, ones that were used so effectively in the spy and actions films shot around the city in recent years. The suit may be Ralph Lauren, but the locations are pure Budapest. You can see the actor (ironically?) starting his day reading a Hungarian newspaper before waiting at an empty table at an empty café for a coffee that never arrives (where are your baked goods now, Mr. Gosling?). Which naturally calls for improvised hijinks at the city’s most fabled and luxurious thermal baths: the Gellért baths at the Gellért Hotel. The baths aren’t exactly under-used as a filming location in Budapest: you can find them for instance in a pivotal scene in Matthew Barney’s art-house classic Cremaster series, and the location is also where food guru Anthony Bourdain relaxed in his Budapest episode of Parts Unknown. But it shows that even when incorporating the goofy scenario of Gosling pretending his soggy shoe is a telephone, the Art Deco interior still looks stunning and seductive. Though the 'point' of the video is to show off the Ralph Lauren suit, it's Budapest that steals the scene. Just have a look. No, really, do!

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible. 

Viral Video: 84 Seconds of Beautiful Budapest

When it comes to film production on Hungary, it is well documented that you are spoiled for choice when it comes to locations. That a new video seems to make the rounds weekly showing off the classic and the modern, the shabby and the chic of the city only confirms how dynamic a location it is. The latest offering, and one of the best, comes from The Calvert Journal, a culture/design sight that calls itself "a guide to the contemporary culture of the New East: eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia and Central Asia." The video must have taken some doing, as it manages to achieve that rare balance of both presenting well-traveled locations in a new light (the thermal baths, the Chain Bridge, the Basilica) alongside locations you need to get your fingers dirty to find, like the hip new Eight District bars and graffiti of central Pest. All in all it's a poetic ode to modern Budapest with a real eye for its contemporary, photogenic flavor. 

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.

Culture Corner: the Statues of Budapest's 5th District

Like every city, Budapest has its own particular lore, as well as having been influenced by a hodgepodge of external cultural forces, be they political or cultural. This is why you can find not one, but two statures of Ronald Reagan in the city, in addition to a statue of TV detective Columbo (Peter Falk) intermingled with tributes to prominent Hungarians. Coupled with whimsical tributes to local legends, Budapest is home to an amazing array of street art in the form of its statutes. Because it is both central and large, many of the most striking and photographed statues of the city are in the much touristed 5th District. Let's have a look at a few of the more curious ones.

via Trip Advisor

Downtown in the inner 5th District is where you will find a statue of a fat policeman. It is said to commemorate a hedonistic cop who loved wine, women and song, and merrily went about his days drinking and twirling his moustache at his romantic prospects. Passers-by rub his protruding stomach to bring luck in love.

via columbophile@wordpress.com

You can also find a statue of American TV character Columbo in the 5th, scratching his head, looking at his dog. Perhaps he is wondering how he ended up in Budapest. The solution is easy: Peter Falk, the actor who plays the iconic private-eye, has Hungarian roots on his mother’s side, and the Columbo statue is on Falk Miksa street. Though no familial connection as been made between Peter Falk and Falk Miksa, that didn’t stop the city from erecting this popular tribute to yet another entertainer with Hungarian blood to make it big in Hollywood.

via wikipedia creative commons

While there is a bust of Ronald Reagan in the city park, the more prominent version of him was erected in Szabadság Square, not far from the American Embassy. Reagan’s contribution to ending the Cold War was acknowledged with this statue, which tourists happy throw their arms around and take selfies with.

via wikipedia creative commons

Perhaps the most iconic and photographed statue in Budapest is that of the Little Princess, along the Danube promenade. The sculptor, László Marton, tells of its inspiration: "I modeled it after my own daughter. She was maybe six years old and playing in the garden. She dressed as a princess: laid a bathrobe on her shoulders and put a crown on her head. I managed to capture this moment and immediately felt that this was a successful work of art. Years later, the capital requested a statue from me. I immediately thought of the "Little Princess" and luckily we managed to find the place where the statue feels good."

There are replicas the Little Princess in Hungarian village of Tapolca and in front of the concert hall of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space in Japan, both donated by the artist.

Given the eccentricity of taste in the city, is it only a matter of time before we see a Bud Spencer statue in Budapest's statue-friendly 5th District?

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible. 

Hungarians in Hollywood: Then and Now.

It’s been so long since a Hungarian film won an Oscar. About an entire year! Of course we can’t let the week go by without sending a hearty congratulations to the short “Sing,”  by Hungarian director and Academy Award winner Kristof Deak. We did a post about the film a few weeks back, so we won't plagiarize ourselves by repeating the same information, but rather honor the win by mentioning a few other notable Oscar winners of days gone by.

It comes as a surprise to a lot of people outside of Hungary just how many prominent film professionals, be they writers, directors, cinematographers or actors, are Hungarian or of Hungarian extraction. There’s a lot of them, from Oscar winning screenwriter Géza Herceg (The Life of Emile Zola) to Mephisto director István Szabó. But none of the culture from which the Academy grew might have been possible were it not for Hungarian Adolph Zukor, founder of one of the world’s largest and most influential film studios: Paramount.  Zukor was known as the “father of the feature film in America” due to his ambitious take on film-making and support for longer film formats.

An immigrant to the United States at age 16, he began his career in a poor section of New York City as an upholsterer. The World’s Fair in Chicago brought him farther west, where he started a fur business, which boomed. He was already a wealthy man a decade later when he partnered with a relative and began distributing films. From there he began to produce, eventually opening his own studio. Known as a studio head with an eye for spotting talent, Zukor signed actors like Rudolph Valentino and Mary Pickford, both of whom would become Hollywood icons. Paramount boomed for decades before weathering bankruptcy, economic depressions, and dwindling theatrical revenues, though it never stopped making films and attracting talent. Zukor stayed with the studio for all its unrest, and held the title of Chairman Emeritus until his death in 1976.

Zukor passed away at the age of 103, a long way from his hometown of Ricse, Hungary. But not before he won his own Oscar, a special lifetime achievement award for his service to film.

Flatpack Films is based in Budapest, Hungary. We are a film company that offers an inspiring and professional work atmosphere for our local and international clients. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast, and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we facilitate, we do to highest standard possible.