Abstract
In order to highlight recent directions in European film culture, this chapter examines the regional aspect of Eastern European cinema by focusing on two of its small- to medium-sized neighbouring industries, those of Hungary and Romania, while presenting a comparative analysis of one film from each of the industries. The Oscar-winning Hungarian Son of Saul (László Nemes 2015) and Romanian Berlin Bear-winning Aferim! (Radu Jude 2015) each gathered the largest domestic audience numbers of their respective nations in 2015, with small national characteristics, European arthouse allegiances and Hollywood influences at work simultaneously, suggesting a process based on a meso-level forging of apparently disparate features and creating a fertile ground of regional linkages and synchronicities.
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Notes
- 1.
Between five and six million in 2009, Romanian cinema attendances reached ten million in 2014 (Centrul National al Cinematografiei 2016).
- 2.
Data published in the revision stage of this chapter (January 2019) shows that Hungarian domestic admissions surpassed one million viewers in both 2017 and 2018, with the highest grossing films of 2017–2018 (not included here) being the comedy sequel A Kind of America 3 (372,000 viewers), real-life-inspired thriller The Whiskey Bandit (2017; 327,000 viewers) and the comedy remake Happy New Year (2018; 160,000 viewers) (Magyar Nemzeti Filmalap 2015).
- 3.
Data published in the revision stage of this chapter (January 2019) shows that Romanian domestic admissions grew from 280,000 in 2017 to 380,000 in 2018, with the highest grossing films of 2018 (not included here) being the historical social drama sequel The Moromete Family 2 (2018; 181,232 viewers), documentary Untamed Romania (2018; 81,426 admissions) and the comedy Kiss it! (2018; 23,252 viewers) (Blaga 2019).
- 4.
Although attempting to summarize such a vast topic is futile, Bordwell et al.’s formulation is enlightening:
the Hollywood cinema sees itself as bound by rules that set stringent limits on individual innovation; that telling a story is the basic formal concern, which makes the film studio resemble the monastery’s scriptorium, the site of the transcription and transmission of countless narratives; that unity is a basic attribute of film form; that the Hollywood film purports to be ‘realistic’ in both an Aristotelian sense (truth to the probable) and a naturalistic one (truth to the historical fact); that the Hollywood film strives to conceal its artifice through techniques of continuity and ‘invisible’ storytelling; that the film should be comprehensible and unambiguous; and that it possesses a fundamental emotional appeal that transcends class and nation. (Bordwell et al. 2005: 2)
- 5.
Indebtedness to Thomas Elsaesser’s conception referring to the functions of European national cinemas is evident: “putting forward the idea of a national cinema (as a theoretical construction) always existing face to face with an ‘other’” (Elsaesser 2005: 22).
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Virginás, A. (2020). Between Transnational and Local in European Cinema: Regional Resemblances in Hungarian and Romanian Films. In: Lewis, I., Canning, L. (eds) European Cinema in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33436-9_10
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