1989 The Real Power of TV
In Romania the fighting was not yet over when Hámos, a Hungarian filmmaker living in Berlin, left for Hungary in December 1989, for the first time since he had left his country of birth without permission ten years earlier. He wanted to make a film about censorship at Hungarian Television — about news analysis, newscasters and reading news — that was contrary to the officially sanctioned broadcasts. Day after day, Hámos watched broadcasts from Romania with his grandmother at the dinner table. In this remarkable video essay on what Hámos terms the "real power" of television, his grandmother's personal point of view is contrasted with the revolution on TV. Archival news footage — from the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the '68 Prague Spring to the events in the Eastern European countries and China in '89 — is interlaced with the comments of television journalists, news presenters and newscasters.
Concept/Realisation: Gusztáv Hámos. Characters: Endre Aczél, Golda Weinberger. With: Annamária Baleczky, Pjózsef Kovács, Marika Takács, Eszter Tamási. Production Assistance: Marian Kiss, Penelope Wehrli, Cristoph Dreher, György Kozma. Music: Mick Harvey. Sound Engineer: Sven Rohrig. Musical scores: Die Haut "Garden of Agony" (part II), "Egmont, opus 84" Beethoven, Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Stephen Gunzenhauser. Híradó Title Music: Gábor Presser. Director of Photography for Mr. Aczél's interview: András Sólyom. Director of Photography for the funeral service of the martyrs of '56: Anita Mechtild Katzorcke. Video Effects: Weitbild, Martin Potthoff. Video effects four dimension: Gusztáv Boronkay, László Mares, Gyula Rimaszécsi. Sound Mixing: Stefan Beckers. Production Manager: Andras Tóth. Producer: Zsolt Zsarkó. Writer/Editor (MTV): Judit Kopper. Made in Weitbild Video Studio, Berlin and in MTV/FMS: Jolán A'rval. For ZDF, Editor: Carl Ludwig Rettinger.
