Miskolc International Film Festival

History

Jameson CineFest was first organized in 2004, receiving its first name after its main sponsor, the Irish whiskey brand Jameson. The festival focuses mainly on young talents under the age of 35. The long feature, short, documentary and animation film competition is screened in different categories. Approx. 5-600 applications are submitted annually for the festival from all over the world, and a preliminary jury selects 50-60 films from this pool into the competition program. The long feature films are selected by Géza Csákvári. Most films screened in this section are invited to the festival, thus the event’s high standard is guaranteed. Each film in the competition program must be a premiere in Hungary. The festival is focusing on American and European independent movies, including the best from Central Europe. Films like Frozen River, Precious, Blue Is The Warmest Colour, Boyhood, Love 3D all premiered in Hungary at the Miskolc IFF, just to name a few.

Jameson CineFest is not only a forum for the best young filmmakers and movies: the festival’s CineClassics program (under the patronage of the Oscar winner director István Szabó) highlights famous personalities and filmmakers who come from Central Europe and yet are little-known in their birthplace, like Oscar winner Emeric Pressburger (born in Miskolc - he is the grandfather of director Kevin Macdonald), Sir Alexander, Vincent and Zoltan Korda, Gabriel Pascal, or István Szöts. In 2012, Michael Curtiz (Mihály Kertész), the Oscar winner Budapest born director of Casablanca will be placed in the focus.

The festival`s western focus was a huge successs in 2015. In this year the festival opened with Sergio Leone`s restored Once Upon a Time in the West, in the presence of Claudia Cardinale.

Lifetime Achievement Awards

Lívia Gyarmathy is one of the greatest figures of Hungarian cinema. Even her first film, Do You Know Sunday-Monday? (Ismeri szandi-mandit?), was well-perceived both by the audience and the critics. The film, starring local legends Ila Schütz, Margit Dajka and Manyi Kiss is still a classic and repeatedly screened. The effects of the political changes of 1989 are pictured in Rapture of Deceit, starring Rita Tushingham. Besides her fine feature films she is also well-known for her documentaries, like the touching The Stairs (1994) or the European Film Award Winner Our Stork from 2000.

One of the best European cinematographers was the congenial partner of the legendary director Krzysztof Kieslowski. He photographed films like the Three Colors: Blue, The Double Life of Véronique (La double vie de Véronique), A Short Film About Killing (Krótki fi lm o zabijaniu), Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down or the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. He was part of Kieslowski’s greatest successes, photographed fourteen films by Krzysztof Zanussi and worked with the bests in Hollywood as well. In 1991 he was awarded as Best Cinematographer at the Venice Film Festival and in 2002 he was nominated for the Academy Award.

He made his debut in Cannes with the film The Round-Up (Szegénylegények) in 1966 after which he directed masterpieces of modern cinema like The Red and the White (Csillagosok, katonák), Red Psalm (Még kér a nép) for which he won the Best Director Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972. His unique and original film language is in complete harmony with the message of the movies. In his works the art seeks to find the springs of action of historical traumas. His genius influenced great figures of cinema like Martin Scorsese, Béla Tarr and Bernardo Bertolucci.

Born in Warsaw, Agnieszka Holland has been a border-crosser” since the beginning of her career: she studied directing in Prague, and, following the success of her first film, Provincial Actors, and the state of emergency, she immigrated to Paris. She received her first Academy Award nomination for Angry Harvest, and the second one for Europe, Europe (1990) – which has won the award for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes. She made her first US film, The Secret Garden in 1993, was the first one to trust Leonardo DiCaprio with a serious role, that of the poet Rimbaud, in the movie Total Eclipse. During her career, she filmed Henry James’ novel, Washington Square (starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Albert Finney), and also co-wrote the Three Colors: Blue. She is the president of the European Film Academy.

The Academy Award winner director started his career with movies like the Age of Illusions (Álmodozások kora), Father (Apa) or Love Film (Szerelmesfilm), after which he became master of spectacular historical tableaux: Mephisto , Colonel Redl and Hanussen made him one of the best directors of the world. All these three films picture a typical Central European characters and all of them were represented by Klaus Maria Brandauer. István Szabó said something fundamental about the connection of 20th century power, politics and art. After the Sunshine (1998) he worked on adaptations like the Taking Sides (2001), Relatives (2006) or The Door (2012) that, similar to his earlier work, analyze the relationship between the individual, the power and the audience.

Vilmos Zsigmond is a European cinematographer – maybe this was his key to success in America. His European sensitivity got appreciated when, at the beginning of the 1970s when a new generation of directors created New Hollywood. The 1956 Hungarian emigré, who had the European cinema culture at his fingertips, was the right man on the right place - and became the cinematographer of the greatest directors: Robert Altman, Michael Cimino, John Boorman, Brian De Palma, and Steven Spielberg. The Close Encounters of the Third Kind brought him the Oscar in 1977. One year later, his next movie, The Deer Hunter, won five Oscars, including Best Picture. He was nominated for the Oscar in 1985 and in 2007 as well. In 1999 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).

She was Claudia, Marcello Mastroianni’s – that is Guido, the director - love in the 8½; Angelica, Alain Delon’s – that is Tancredi Falconeri – love in The Leopard. Venus, Jean-Paul Belmondo’s love in the Cartouche. Jill, the dream of all men, in the Once Upon a Time in the West. Ginetta, in the Rocco and His Brothers. Gabriella, in The Immortal Bachelor. Molly, Klaus Klinski’s partner in Fitzcarraldo. Doroteia in Manoel de Oliveira’s last film Gebo and the Shadow. So: simply she is la diva assoluta of the European cinema, the muse of Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Werner Herzog, Sergio Leone and Claude Lelouch.

Reception

The festival has always been well received by the Hungarian press and professional critics. Most papers, like the daily Magyar Nemzet, or the leading online magazine index.hu, the daily Népszabadság and also revizoronline.hu say, among others, that Jameson CineFest is Hungary’s leading international film festival. ‘Jameson CineFest accomplished something – from a meager budget by European standards – in the city of steel industry, that is second to none among Hungarian film events’, wrote Gábor Muray in Magyar Nemzet in 2010. According to György Báron’s article published in the leading weekly Élet és Irodalom in 2010, ‘the brilliant film selection at this year’s CineFest was the best of all Hungarian festival line-ups ever’; furthermore the Miskolc film muster was the first among the Hungarian film festivals to have entered the field of the great international festivals. ‘Jameson CineFest needed less than ten years to grow into becoming the most important Hungarian film festival with the best official selection’, wrote László Kolozsi in revizoronline.hu, at the Hungarian National Cultural Fund’s critical site in the very same year. ‘It feels like we were in Cannes… 2011 will be remembered as the year of the turning point in the history of the festival: it became visible in the map of the great European film festivals’ wrote index.hu in September 2011. ‘Great festival, little money, and all the other clichés… Jameson CineFest is not all about that but about dedicated people who are professionals in bringing out the maximum from the minimum’ says the critic of filmtett.ro in her article with the title ‘A Humane Festival’. She continues: ‘Screening something like the 70-year-old film People on the Alps (Emberek a havason) by István Szőts on a festival is a trendsetting event. István Szöts would be 100 next year and talking about him is the celebration of the Hungarian film… Jameson CineFest is proud to do so, either for the profession or the audience… Touching films, intense competition, great conferences, and all in a human voice: this Miskolc joyride in the autumn sunshine was a true tour de force of films, and no one could desire more – but same time, next year, here again!’