Zoltán Huszárik

Who was Zoltán Huszárik?

Zoltán Huszárik was an influential Hungarian film director, screenwriter, visual artist and occasional actor, an acclaimed auteur of the European modern art film.

Huszárik was born in the small village of Domony, Hungary. His father died when he was two years old. Being an only child, Huszárik had an adoring relationship with his widowed mother. His background had a great influence on his work.

He was accepted to the Hungarian School of Film- and Theatrical Arts, but was expelled in 1952 because his family was blamed to be Kulaks. He took on different jobs, when—after a seven-year hiatus—he was again accepted to the film school in 1959. In the same year he made his first student film, a short entitled Játék about two prisoners playing chess with the shadow of their bars when the sun shines unto their cell. Huszárik's graduation film was another short entitled Groteszk in 1963 about a strange train voyage of an artist carrying his own picture.

Huszárik made his first professional short film in 1965 at Béla Balázs Studios entitled Elégia. This 20-minute experimental short film was generally acclaimed as being the starting point of a new visual style in Hungarian filmmaking. Often called a "film poem" or a "film symphonie" Huszárik's masterpiece consists of montages of horses from the dawn of time to the modern times from cave paintings to horse races, mourning the loss of these creatures and their service to mankind, starting as free animals and becoming slaughterhouse victims. The film is generally regarded as an allegory to the human fate.