Grafogirl and the Front Film Shoot

The Short Story
During the last few months of the Second World War, wintertime, a small Hungarian village becomes a front. Germans soldiers are leaving as the Russians are arriving. The village's surviving male youths have been sent away to fight; the last of the livestock carried off. All that remains are those that cannot leave.
The story takes place in the vicinity of a manor house; it's grounds, a nearby road, and a peasant woman named Marika Varga's home. Her small abode, once a place of tranquility, is slowly transformed by external factors. The 40 year-old widow observes the chain of events unfolding through her window. The sounds of approaching motors and shouting grow stronger. The front breaks into Marika's kitchen in the form of two Russian soldiers.
One of the Russian soldiers - a wounded youth - returns to Marika's kitchen and tries to rape her. Perhaps he wants to prove that he's a ‘real man'. Maybe his companion and military superior goaded him into the act. The defenseless woman, however, fights off the young Russian. She isn't afraid of the gun or the young man! She slaps him across the face in the manner of a mother who wants to teach her very bad child a lesson.
The young soldier turns red, ashamed of himself. He isn't a cruel soldier. He isn't an aggressive guy. He is only a lost youth who misses his mother. He doesn't understand his behaviour; he doesn't understand the whole world.
The woman makes the young soldier sit down in a chair and gives him soup with bread. He is about the same age as her missing son. The would-be-marauder is dying of hunger. Once the young soldier has eaten, the widow gives him back his soldier's cap and gun and ushers him out.
The short story's poignancy lies in its timeless quality. It could be set in the midst of any war. While cruelty and inhumanity are often the staples of war, within the context of this particular story, we can observe a speck of humanity that catalyzes someone to rethink their actions and their consequences.

A million thanks to Valerie who rewrote my mistakes and my stupid translations, and so our blog became better. ;)

The original blog, in Hungarian, is www.frontfilm.b13.hu !!!

Valerie's own letter arrived from Canada shortly afterward. She wrote in English about her works and her life, for her Hungarian writing skills are currently ‘developing', so to speak. I figured that it shouldn't present a problem, since Arpad Goncz translated a lot of books from English to Hungarian, such as the entire Lord of the Rings cycle, for example. The young woman also sent her previous works on DVD and a nice headshot of herself. I sent my sister the entire package in the original bubble envelope that Valerie sent me from Toronto; only I added the festival director's recommendation as well. The above-mentioned colleague passed this on to Goncz's personal assistant. But I didn't think that my sweet sister would give her the original envelope with my name on it!
After a while, the festival director called me with a curious story.
Arpad Goncz's personal assistant has a very interesting name. Her name is very similar to my family name, which isn't very common in Hungary. The woman told the Festival director that she had received an open package. She saw her name on it, yet with a few mistakes, and some unknown address. Oh dear, she had read my name on the envelope! And the poor secretary saw that the package, which contained a lot of English material, was sent by some woman from Toronto whose family name was Greek. All that the poor woman could read was the recommendation in Hungarian! And so, she called up the only Hungarian phone number visible and asked for information about the history of the envelope. It took a little while, but the festival director eventually caught on. He suggested that the lady speak with me about the story. I called my ‘almost-relative', the two of us had a great laugh over the entire matter, and the assistant promised me that she would settle the rights with Arpad Goncz.

 20. January, 2007.

I got acquainted with Valerie Politis, a ‘young' filmmaker, at a Film festival three years ago, where I was an organizer. A few facts about Valerie; her father is Greek, her mother is Hungarian, but she lives in Canada because her parents grew up there. Although Valerie is a third generation Hungarian, she speaks the language very well, with a few curious quirks. She has an interesting accent, and her Hungarian is often similar to the way our ancestors spoke after the Second World War, for her grandparents escaped the country in 1956. Sometimes I feel as if I am speaking with my granny and not my friend. Actually, she likes to mix 2 languages, speaking "Hunglish". When she swears she often uses it. If I should talk about her characteristic feature, I think of her interesting guffaw. She laughs with such intensity that if anybody hears it, they will automatically smile, perhaps without any understanding of why they are suddenly so cheerful.

The two of us have been keeping in touch for a long time via e-mail. She asked for my help last summer. I helped her obtain the rights to a short story so that she could shoot a short film based on Arpad Goncz's* short story, The Front.

*Árpád Göncz (born February 10, 1922 in Budapest) is a Hungarian liberal politician and former President of The Republic (May 2, 1990-August 4, 2000). He graduated in law from the Budapest Pázmány Péter University of Arts and Sciences in 1944. He has also worked as a writer and has published several novels, plays and essays, as well as translated from English to Hungarian such works as J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rp%C3%A1d_G%C3%B6ncz)