A tribute dedicated to Hungarian director Judit Elek is a highlight of the 65th edition of the international documentary film festival, the Festival dei Popoli, held in Florence from 2 to 10 November, under the artistic direction of Alessandro Stellino, with management by Claudia Maci. This retrospective – the first in Italy dedicated to the filmmaker – is the result of a collaboration between the Festival dei Popoli and the Calliope Arts Foundation, under the auspices of the three-year project ‘Women Trailblazers in Documentary Cinema’, aimed at rediscovering and celebrating female directors whose work has been undervalued or forgotten over the years.

The Festival dei Popoli and Calliope Arts – a charitable foundation committed to the promotion and appreciation of women’s contributions to the visual arts, literature, science, music and social history – will bring one of Europe’s most important female directors to Florence. Judit Elek will be in Florence to meet the public during a masterclass and to present her films, in their newly restored versions from the Film Archive of the National Film Institute of Hungary. Elek’s work chronicles her country’s stories throughout the course of the second half of the 20th century, from the Holocaust to the Cold War, from life under the Soviet regime to the cultural and social upheaval of 1968.

Judit Elek was born in Budapest in 1937. As a child, she survived the Holocaust and the war in a ghetto. At the age of 18, she took part in the 1956 uprising in Budapest, and in 1968, she was in Paris at the time of the country’s student protests – all historical events that proved instrumental in shaping her artistic path. In 1961, Elek graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Art and Cinematography, as part of a group that later formed the core of the Balázs Béla Studio, an experimental workshop comprised of young creatives, in line with the trends of the European New Wave. Judit Elek's early works are lyrical studies of solitude, in which she portrayed the spontaneity of direct cinema, transforming it into ‘poetry in motion’. Encounter (1963) was the first Hungarian direct-cinema film, with no leading actors and improvised dialogue. Inhabitants of Castles (1966) and the two-part film How Long Does a Man Live? (1967) are documentaries in which the director follows and depicts a social portrait of human life in its entirety, juxtaposing the fate of the lonely ageing worker on the threshold of retirement with that of the young apprentice poised to replace him (presented at Cannes in 1968, the film won the Grand Prix at Oberhausen and the Jury Prize at Locarno).

Elek’s later films, the documentaries A Hungarian Village (1972) and A Commonplace Story (1975), were made over the course of five years in a mining village. They explore the fate and relationships of two girls who dream of escape, presenting an articulate psychological reportage featuring the rural Hungary of ‘socialism in the making’. She studies the harsh state in which its peasants live, as they are reduced to proletarians, and focuses on the intricate system of prejudice with which they are confronted. The filmmaker then inaugurated her ‘Jewish period’ with Memories of River, made between 1987 and 1989, based on documents pertaining to the infamous Tiszaeszlár blood-libel trial, when Jewish rafters were accused of the murder of a maid, who disappeared in 1882. The film won several awards in America and France and brought Elek into contact with Elie Wiesel, with whom she made the documentary To Speak the Unspeakable in 1997. This seminal work for Holocaust commemoration follows the life of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning writer, to Auschwitz and Buchenwald

“I became a filmmaker,” explains the now 87-year-old director, “in order to be able to recount what I see around me, what I have experienced, what old people have experienced in this small country, where there always seems to be a power other than the one people would like – ideally, just and good. Yet, they put up with it because they believe it to be somehow inevitable. And I, like a female Don Quixote, stand and fight a losing battle, I don't give in, and hope to die that way. And then, there is another motivation: the fact that after 60 years of work, I realise that my oldest film is still alive and has an impact on people, if they have the chance to see it'.

This tribute is part of a broader initiative of support by Calliope Arts to the Festival dei Popoli over several editions, which includes tributes and ‘deeper-dive’ events presenting film-makers neglected by the history of cinematographic art. The project aims to offer the public the opportunity to appreciate the work of true forerunners, who have remained in the shadows of their era. The collaborative project also envisages the development of thematic pathways within women's cinema, designed at further enhancing the process of rediscovery, not only of female directors’ artistic production as a whole, but also of movements or personalities and figures that deserve to be brought to light or have not received due attention. The intention is to help reformulate this forgotten side of cinema, which even in the documentary sector, has too often been overlooked and one-sided, until now.

Founded in 2021 by Margie MacKinnon and Wayne McArdle, Calliope Arts Foundation provides support for restoration, exhibitions and educational activities, as well as curating and supporting programmes and publications such as The Curators’ Quaderno and the magazine Restoration Conversations. (calliopearts.org).

This tribute to Judit Elek is created in cooperation with the National Film Institute Hungary - Film Archive.