Reprise: filmmaker Judit Elek, high-flying portraitist of Hungarian society

Among the summer re-releases, we will look at three films by Judit Elek, which are making their return to the big screen in restored versions, a now rare piece of Eastern European modernity. A child of the Hungarian ^20th century, born in 1937, Elek has weathered many storms: a survivor of the Budapest ghetto, she entered film studies in 1956, during the city's revolt crushed by the Soviets, then joined the independent Bela Balazs studio from the very beginning in 1960, an incubator of the local new wave, during the relative thaw of the presidency of János Kadar (1912-1989).

Elek began his career under the aegis of documentary. The Lady of Constantinople (1969), Perhaps Tomorrow (1979), and Maria's Feast (1984) nevertheless correspond to the fictional turn of a work that will always maintain a very strong relationship with reality. The idea of "direct" is, in fact, anchored in Elek's cinema, whose gesture, sometimes light or sophisticated, paints a series of snapshots. A way of making us forget the camera, as the proponents of "direct cinema" wanted at the time? Rather, a way of reminding us that the gaze is always an actor in the scene. Hence this taste for "passerby" characters: taken from reality or as if surprised in the street, these anonymous heroes traverse the era and reveal it in a single movement.

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