Fanfare

 Hungarian military band, 1954.

Csepel, Pannonia and Danuvia Motorcycles

Csepel made motorcycles in Hungary from 1951-1975. They were sold under many other brand names including Danuvia, Tunde, Panni, & Pannonia. In the United States they were marketed under the White marque.

The Manfred Weiss Steel and Metal Works was renamed to Csepel Works after the Communist Party came to power in Hungary. The factory began producing bicycles in 1928 under the WM marque with the first motorcycles appearing in 1930. These BMA style machines were built until 1935 and were followed by the 86cc Turan. Around 10,000 motorcycles were built prior to the destruction of Budapest by the Russians during WWII, which, after the country had swung to hard right politics, they entered on the side of the Axis powers. When the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, the Weiss family avoided deportation to the death camps and escaped to Portugal, reportedly with the help of sympathetic Hungarian government officials. During the war the factory built engines for Messerschmitt.

Production resumed after the war in 1947, with the introduction of the Csepel Tura 100. Pannonia machines were built in another section of the WM works and produced 125cc and 250cc machines.

Pannonia found a market in the Soviet Union, building and exporting around 40 thousand machines per year. These were quite good machines when introduced, but as no R&D work was done during the Soviet years the bikes were very dated by the 70s with the result that Western markets were uninterested even at greatly discounted prices.

In the early 70s new models were introduced, the Pannonia T5, P10 and P20, and later a P21 and P12. These were exported to Asia, Europe and the United States (as the White) with mixed reception.

Pannonia ceased production in October 1975.

Csepel had continued to produce bicycles but their products too were on the wrong side of history, with much of their export going to Iran. The Schwinn firm took a commanding share in Csepel in 1989, but that company failed in 1993 and by 2003 Csepel had closed up shop. 

Derek Jarman

Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman (1942 –1994) was an English artist, film maker, costume designer, stage designer, writer, poet, gardener, and gay rights activist.

Jarman publicly proclaimed himself a gay rights activist. His reputation as an underground filmmaker was established in 1976 with his film Sebastiane, a homoerotic take on the life of Saint Sebastian.

In 1993, Jarman released his last work, Blue, a confessional film without images, but with a very well-crafted soundtrack in which he evokes his experience as an HIV-positive patient. Derek Jarman died of AIDS at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London in 1994.

Jonas Gricius

Jonas Gricius (1928 –2021) was a Lithuanian cinematographer, known for his work on a number of classical films starting from the late 1950s, including Hamlet, The Girl and the Echo, and The Blue Bird.

In 1954 he graduated from the All-Union Institute of Cinematography, a course by Boris Volchek. He worked at the film studio Lenfilm, as an assistant to director Andrei Moskvin. Since 1958, he was Operator of the Lithuanian Film Studio (LKS) and Director of the Lithuanian Film Studio (1978–1989).

Gricius died on 1 February 2021, at the age of 92. 

Ivars Seleckis

Ivars Seleckis (1934) is a Latvian cameraman and director who specializes in documentary films.

Ivars Seleckis graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography (1952–1957). He began working at the Riga Film Studio in 1958; first as an assistant cameraman, then as a cameraman and director. 

From 1991, he worked at the Riga Documentary Film Studio. He is the author of more than thirty documentaries. In 1989, his film Šķērsiela [Cross Street] was awarded the European Film Academy Award for Best Documentary Film, the Robert and Frances Flaherty Award at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, and the Nika Award in Moscow in 1990. This film is also included in the Latvian Cultural Canon. 

The sequel to the 1999 film Jaunie laiki Šķērsielā won the Best Film Award at the Latvian Film Festival Lielais Kristaps in the Best Documentary category in 2000. The third instalment in this series, Kapitālisms Šķērsielā, was released in 2013.

In 2005, the artist was made an officer of the Order of the Three Stars. In 2014, at the Lielais Kristaps ceremony, he and his wife Maija Selecka were awarded the special prize for outstanding contribution to national cinema. 

Algimantas Mockas

Algimantas Mockus (1931–2022) was a Lithuanian cinematographer and director, known for Egle, Queen of Snakes (1965), Devil's Bride (1973) and Libahunt (1968). 

Robert Verba

R. Verba is a film director and cinematographer, considered the pioneer of Lithuanian poetic documentary. His filmography includes more than 30 documentaries and about 100 stories for the film magazine "Tarybų Lietuva". R. Verba is considered to be part of the generation of young documentary filmmakers. These are directors who returned from the Moscow Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in the early 1960s and brought a new approach to filmmaking.

R. Verba together with writer I. Simonaitytė

Robert Verba - Bridges of Time

Until the 1960s, occupied Lithuania was dominated by propaganda, engaged documentaries that served the expectations of the Soviet government. The new generation became exceptional in looking at a person and their personal history, speaking in images, not words. A metaphorical, symbolic language was created through the play of image, editing, and sound. This was completely new in the world of Lithuanian cinema.

R. Verba's most famous and highly acclaimed films, such as "The Old Man and the Earth", "The Feeling of Ruta", and "The Centuries of Passion", immortalize the old inhabitants of Lithuania. The director's other works also often focus on the natural environment of the Lithuanian countryside and its simple, real people, who, living simple lives, could have seemed like rebels in the context of Soviet "heroes".

Oleg Tabakov

Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov (1935 –2018) was a Soviet and Russian actor and the Artistic Director of the Moscow Chekhov Art Theatre, a People's Artist of the USSR (1988).

Tabakov studied at the Moscow Art Theatre School. Upon graduating, he became one of the founding fathers of the Sovremennik Theatre.

In 1992-2008, Tabakov was a member of the commission on state awards under the President of the Russian Federation. In March 2014, Tabakov signed a letter to President Putin in support of the annexation of Crimea.

Vojtěch Jasný

Vojtěch Jasný (1925 –2019) was a Czech director, screenwriter and professor who has written and directed over 50 films.

During his teens, he made amateur movies on a 9mm camera and during WWII his father was arrested and sent to Auschwitz where he died in 1942. After the war Jasný went to study philosophy and Russian language, but he switched to study filmmaking at newly founded FAMU in 1946.  

Jasný made feature and documentary films in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria, USA & Canada, and was a notable figure in the Czechoslovak New Wave movement of the 1960s. He is best remembered for his movies The Cassandra Cat and All My Compatriots, both of which won prizes at Cannes Film Festival. In addition to his film career, he taught directing at film schools in Salzburg, Vienna, Munich and New York.

In 2009 Arkaitz Basterra Zalbide made a documentary about Jasný called Life and Film (The Labyrinthine Biographies of Vojtěch Jasný) which was later released as a book.

White Bird, A Wonder Story

White Bird, A Wonder Story is a 2024 American war drama film based on the 2019 graphic novel of the same name by R. J. Palacio. Serving as both a spin-off prequel and a sequel to Wonder (2017).

After the events of Wonder, Julian is visited by Sara, his grandmother from Paris, who, in response to Julian's reflection about his need to be socially passive to fit in at his new school, tells him about her childhood as a young Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

In 1942, Sara evades being rounded up by the Gestapo and spends over a year being hidden by her classmate Julien (one of whose legs is paralyzed as a result of poliomyelitis) in a barn adjacent to the house he lives in with his parents. She is instructed never to leave the structure to avoid being discovered by their neighbors whom they suspect of being Gestapo or Milice informers. At night, Julien teaches Sara what he has learned at school during the day. The affection between them eventually grows into love.

In 1944, after the liberation of Monte Cassino, Julien is arrested by the Milice on his way to school at a checkpoint and forcefully transported to a remote camp in the mountains via lorry. During an escape attempt by the other prisoners, he is shot dead. At the end of the war, Sara is reunited with her father, Max, but she learns her mother has been killed at Auschwitz. Sometime later, Max accepts a new job in Paris, and he and Sara move there, but she still makes sure to preserve her friendship with the Beaumiers and visit them often.

Back in the present, Julian, moved by his grandmother's story, decides to make amends with his past and become a better person.

 

Pod znakiem kotwicy - Under the Sign of Anchor

Ukrainian documentary film director Taras Spivak is known for “Pod znakiem kotwicy” (Under the Sign of Anchor, 2024).

Taras Spivak

Spivak ridicules the Soviet army and the military-industrial complex, or the “war machine,” and what remains of it, while showing how terrible and absurd it can be. The film is based on archive footage from the times of the collapse of the USSR and the first years of Ukrainian independence, concerning the Kiev Higher School of Political Officers of the Navy and the Soviet aircraft carrier “Kiev.”

Still from the film

Taras and his friends found the material for the film "Under the Sign of the Anchor" in the attic of the National Cinematography of Ukraine, formerly known as Kyivnaukfilm. In the summer of 2021, the director cataloged 12 thousand film tapes that were stored in improper conditions.

Erwin Axer

Erwin Axer (1917 –2012) was a Polish theatre director, writer and university professor. A long-time head of Teatr Współczesny (Contemporary Theatre) in Warsaw, he also staged numerous plays abroad, notably in German-speaking countries, in the US and Leningrad (USSR).

Born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Axer spent most of his early years in Lviv (now Ukraine), where he decided to devote his life to theatre.

The first years of the Soviet Invasion of Poland at the outbreak of World War II he made his living acting and staging dramas in the communist-controlled Polish Dramatic Theatre, the only Polish-language theatre left open in the city.

He took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and was taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to a quarry in Germany as a slave worker. After the war he returned to Poland and in 1946 became the head of the Chamber Theatre of the Soldiers' House in Łódź, an institution that moved to Warsaw the following year and was renamed the Teatr Współczesny. Axer headed that theatre for almost 40 years and retired only in 1981, following the imposition of the Martial Law in Poland. 

I Know Where I'm Going!

I Know Where I'm Going! is a 1945 romance film directed and written by the British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey, and features Pamela Brown.

Joan Webster is a 25-year-old, upper middle-class Englishwoman with an ambitious, independent spirit, who always "knows where she's going". She travels from her home in Manchester to the isle of Kiloran in the Hebrides to marry Sir Robert Bellinger, a very wealthy, much older industrialist.

One of the most complex scenes shows the small boat battling the Corryvreckan whirlpool. This was a combination of footage shot at Corryvreckan between the Hebridean islands of Scarba and Jura, and Bealach a'Choin Ghlais (Sound of the Grey Dogs) between Scarba and Lunga. 

Michael Powell

82 years after it was made, Michael Powell's A Canterbury Tale remains the perfect remedy for self-pity.

In August 1943 the director Michael Powell came to east Kent to shoot his most ambitious and personal film to date. A Canterbury Tale took its lead from Chaucer to spin the story of three modern-day pilgrims uprooted by the war. It showed us the hedgerows and the hop gardens and the ancient road atop the downs. It celebrated the values and traditions of an England under fire. That wartime summer, the film's locations came haunted by the ghosts of the pardoner, the falconer, the garrulous wife of Bath.

The film's plot runs something like this. Three weary travellers (land girl, British soldier, US sergeant) find themselves waylaid for a few days in the village of Chillingbourne, 10 minutes outside Canterbury. None of them want to be there, they would rather be at home, except that they are so beat-up, lonely and saddlesore that they hardly know where home is any more. The movie throws them together and has them solve a local mystery. Then it cuts the ties and turns them loose, batting the pilgrims on to Canterbury where they wander the bombsites and blank spaces, their lives a mess, their futures uncertain. Eventually, against all the odds, they each receive a blessing. 

Vladimir Pooey

The Democrat and Chronicle newspaper out of Rochester, N.Y. has a good story about one of its former citizens, Tim Trombitas. But he is better known as Vladimir Pooey, one of the Streetmosphere characters at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

If you visit Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., look for a character named Vladimir Pooey in the Hollywood Studios section working the crowd as part of an improv troupe of actors.

Movie director Vladimir Pooey, you see, is just one of many incarnations that Tim Trombitas, aka Tim Kincaid, has brought to life over the years. 

Masood Akhtar

Masood Akhtar (1940 –2022) was a Pakistani film and television actor who was considered one of the versatile actors of the industry.

Akhtar began his acting career in the 1960s with theatre and soon became one of the popular performers on stage. In 1968, director and producer Shabab Kiranwi introduced him to the film industry. He worked in around 135 movies ⁠— 78 Urdu, 51 Punjabi, three double versions and two Pashto. Akhtar is the pioneer of starting stage drama at Alhamra Arts Council. One of his early plays, Paisa Bolta Hai (Money Speaks), which was staged at Alhamra in the 1970s, earned him much popularity. 

Enrico Hartzenberg

As a small boy with a witty personality, Enrico Hartzenberg always performed on their stoep in Kuils River with the hopes of one day writing, acting and directing his own productions.

Hartzenberg is the founder and director of Hartzenberg Films, a production company which has released several productions, including a web series “Van Adamse”, a theatre production “Liefde is Rooi” and now a brand-new production, “Die Lig is Blou”

“Die Lig is Blou” tells the tale of two friends, Samantha and Michael, who play a supernatural game that resurrects the ghost of a murdered family member, Claudine, who holds a secret about one of them. The characters are portrayed by the award-winning Crystal-Donna Roberts, Lisa-Maree Bruiners and Chester Miggels. 

Kenji Misumi (1921 –1975) was a Japanese film director. He created film series such as Lone Wolf and Cub and the initial film in the long-running Zatoichi series. He also directed Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice, starring Shintaro Katsu. He died at age 54.

In 2012, his 1973 film Sakura no Daimon was voted by Makoto Shinozaki at the BFI The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time. 

Thomas Stiller

Thomas Stiller (1961) is a German film director, screenwriter and actor.

He made his feature film debut in 1995 with The Burning Snail. The drama about a 14-year-old boy who hopes to escape his isolation by joining a youth gang.

The psychological thriller Silent Night – Holy Night, released in 1999, earned Stiller a nomination for the Adolf Grimme Prize the following year.

So Good

Sexed up, ironic, hilarious punk rock polemic from the dream fusion of Veruca Salt and Cher Horowitz: So Good.

Coming from apparently nowhere, she’s making a name for herself with a mix of drill, hip hop and punk. As well as fusing musical styles the lyrics also mix serious topics, such as politics and gender, with a sense of humour.They transcended music with their performance, and it was a performance. Even their dance routines oozed rebellion!

Toxic masculinity given the ridicule it so richly deserves.

Stanislav Došlý

Stanislav Došlý was born on May 8, 1928 in Martiněves near Roudnice nad Labem, Czechoslovakia. His father was a railroad construction worker, and his mother stayed at home to raise Stanislav and his two brothers. His family often moved, from Martiněves to Břežánky, and in 1938 to Želenice u Slaného, ​​where Stanislav attended basic school. 

After the War, the family moved for the last time to Děčín. Stanislav finished his apprentice studies and worked as a carpenter until 1950. Then he tried to cross the border, was arrested by the border patrol, interrogated and after three months of custody, sentenced to 21 months in prison. He served the entire sentence in the Jáchymov labor camp. 

After his release, he served the two-year army service and the compulsory six months in rolling mills. 

Géza Hofi

Géza Hofi (born Géza Hoffmann, 1936 - 2002) was a Hungarian actor and comedian. He is possibly the most popular Hungarian parodist of all time, who has had a strong influence on Hungarian cabaret.

Géza Hofi was the highlight of Hungarian cabaret for decades. He never followed any pattern or trend; he was always following his own trail.

His death created an enormous vacuum in Hungarian comedy, and it is a common consensus among the people who witnessed his performances that there probably never would be another comedian like him.

In the Hungarian People's Republic, Géza Hofi was closely monitored in large part due to his criticisms of the political system. He alluded to it several times during his performances, jokingly addressing members of the party, secret agents and government snitches that sat in the audience. Besides he was monitored by the StB as well. 

Even though he was critical of the government, and János Kádár, who was then the head of state/government was often subject of his parodies, he received accolades on the state level as well. Even János Kádár said to appreciate and understand Hofi's performances to a certain extent. (Hofi never spent any substantial time in prison after all.)