Outburst (Explosion), 1956, by Judit Reigl. We love a story about a person who defied odds, went against societal norms, cut their own path in this world and ultimately succeeded. Such is the case with late Expressionist painter Juidt Reigl, who died a few years back almost a century after she was born. Left behind is a large body of work, some of which can be seen in the world’s most prestigious museums, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Judit Reigl was born on May 1, 1923, i ..read more

If you are watching one of Netflix’s most popular series, Shadow and Bone, you may notice that both seasons were filmed at least in part in and around Hungary. ‘May’ is the operative word here, as a good deal of the filming was accomplished at the sounds stages of the renown Origo Film Studios, where the imaginary world of the series’ Grishaverse was recreated. The Netfilx incarnation of Shadow and Bones, derived from the bestselling book series of the same title by Leigh Bardugo, was first aired in 2022, featuring eight episodes before being renewed for a second season. The creators had the ..read more

If you are local to the region, you know it has been a cold and rainy past half year. This type of weather sends certain romantic minds down nostalgic paths towards a distant past. Luckily, in the age of the Internet, such reveries are made easy, especially as there have been a spate of uncovered tourist promo films and archival footage uploaded. Somebody even took it upon themselves to colorize a good deal of old video, really bringing the past to life. You can see from the near-100 year old British Pathé clip of 1930s Budapest just how picturesque the city is and was. It’s almost so pristin ..read more

via the Hotel Budapest FB page Here’s some inside information from the backend of this blog: our most viewed post is not about Timothée Chalamet, nor is it about Blade Runner 2049, or Budapest’s luxurious thermal baths, but about the oft-maligned ‘brutalist’ style of architecture popularized in the middle part of last century, and identified with the then reigning Socialist regime. Despite its unfortunate connotations and unsubtle appearance, Brutalism has a forcefulness and purpose behind its forms that has attracted an increasingly broad international fanbase. And Budapest — while not in le ..read more

Hungarians have come up with so many inventions and ideas, from the atomic bomb to the ball point pen, that it would be difficult to list here. Nobody in these parts is surprised when it’s revealed a Hungarian had a hand in the latest technology, from the covid vaccine to the Excel spreadsheet on Windows. But every now and again, even we are shocked to discover certain local ingenuity that has made its way into the big world. Take for instance the one-time viral game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.’ Without the inventive imagination of a long-dead Hungarian writer, this game, not to mention Will ..read more

Not long ago the famed music website Pitchfork published a list of the all-time best film soundtracks. A few names came up again and again: obviously, John Williams, Vangelis, and Tangerine Dream were well represented. But among those luminaries, a Hungarian composer found himself with an outsized place. That is of course György Ligeti, the Central European avant-garde composer whose work was embraced by serious Hollywood filmmakers, most saliently Stanley Kubrick. Ligeti’s life, though triumphant, was fraught with hardship. Born Hungarian in a Hungarian enclave of Romanian Transylvania in 19 ..read more

via Arbelos György Fehér is perhaps best known for his collaborations with art-house legend Béla Tarr, including production work on such classics as Sátántangó and the Werckmeister Harmonies. Fehér was actually an accomplished director in his own right, but in his lifetime, his films saw little distribution outside of his native Hungary. Real film buffs have always found ways — usually illegal ones — of wrenching such films from the Internet and watching them at home. Luckily, this need not be the case for much longer with Twilight, as Fehér is getting something of a revival, in the form of f ..read more

If you have ever spent any time in Hungary, you know that native Hungarians are proud of the numerous inventors who have originated from their country. From the ball-point pen to the atom bomb, Hungarians can take credit for inventions both practical and revolutionary. But not all famous Hungarian inventors were so pragmatic. Take, for instance, Kempelen Farkas (better known by his German name, Wolfgang von Kempelen), a lifelong inventor and creator of the ‘chess robot’ known as ‘The Turk’. These days, you can play chess against a computer, and, unless you are a grandmaster, it is likely the ..read more

Budapest Ring Road, 1916, via Fortepan.hu An old Austrian tourist film from over a hundred years ago was recently uploaded to Vimeo by The Hungarian National Film Institute’s Archives in their efforts to share the amazing historical footage they have accumulated. In watching, you can see just how little the city of Budapest has changed in over a century, with perhaps the only site no longer around being the Sió Fountain, which was destroyed in World War II. Of course, it’s not totally true that the city hasn’t changed. Budapest has modernized along with the rest of the world and is loaded wit ..read more

Just when we thought Hungarians had somehow been excluded from the major honors of the 94th Academy Awards, Best Supporting Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis opened her mouth at the post-ceremony press conference and sang a little in Hungarian, revealing that Hungary is the “country of my family.” This is because the grand dame scream queen is the daughter of Hollywood legend (and child of Hungarian immigrants) Tony Curtis. According to Wikipedia, Curtis’s parents “were Hungarian Jewish emigrants from Hungary: his father was born in Ópályi, near Mátészalka, and his mother was a native of Nagymih ..read more