The Hungarian Márta Mészáros is one of the most important European directors of the 20th century. The first woman to win the Golden Bone at the Berlin Film Festival – Adoption (1975) – suffered a double stigma in the West: for being a filmmaker from the East and for being a woman. Despite struggling to make a place for herself in a male-dominated industry, her name was overshadowed until the restoration of her work by the National Film Institute of Hungary and her lifetime achievement award on the part of the European Cinema Academy, they have resituated her again in the first term she deserves.

Her work reflects the social changes of a communist country through the eyes and feelings of women who do not cower in the face of adverse circumstances. The insertion of real elements into fiction and attention to faces become constants of a style that gathers influences from the Nouvelle Vague and Soviet cinema. The factory is the recurrent frame where she documents the working conditions of these women, often organized against the injustices of the employer. A markedly political work that honestly and authentically shows the evolution of Hungary from the post-war period until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

On September 8 and 21, the MIFDB organizes two activities as part of the retrospective organized by the Filmoteca de Catalunya and the Consulate of Hungary:

• 8th Septembre | 20.00 h | Filmoteca de Catalunya (Sala Chomón): Screening of ‘Nine months’ and conversation between Marta Selva (MIFDB) and Vanesa Fernández (Zinebi)

• 21st Septembre | 19.00 h | Filmoteca de Catalunya (Sala Laya):         Márta Mészáros seen by Mònica Rovira

You can see the full program here.