Review by Beatrice On 13-Jun-2024
Cinema has no boundaries; it is a means that allows us to see reality from another point of view.
A diary is found in an attic in Budapest, belonging to a Hungarian worker from the communist period.
It contains a precise record of all the films watched in various cinemas over 52 years from 1942 to 1994, exactly 2158 feature films.
This notebook becomes the path the director takes to narrate the story of a family through the fascinating medium of cinema.
The temporal journey undertaken uses clips from films listed in the diary, from which emerges not only the history of communist Hungary but also the stories of marginalized realities and individuals facing their traumatic and enigmatic experiences.
The journey of a family navigating the psychophysical limits imposed by an alienating society, which can only be escaped, survived, dreamed about, and imagined through cinema.
The only art that allows these people to distance themselves from reality, to exorcise frustrations, to survive meaninglessness.
A temporary escape, a getaway from the daily reality that stifles freedoms, to immerse oneself in different worlds, gripping stories, and characters to empathize with; an emotional refuge, a comfort that resonates with personal experiences, offering an alternative vision.
A love for cinema that the diary's author passed on to his children; daughter Szilvia and eldest son Istvan, who, along with his wife, takes care of Attila, the grandson abandoned by his mother when he was only three months old.
The latter does not know, because it is a secret within the family's mysteries, that he is Szilvia's son and not her brother as he has been told.
If cinema could certainly be an open window to another world for the notebook's author, it continues to be so for the whole family, living immersed in DVDs and times marked by feature films.
A deep vein of melancholy accompanies the construction of the document, although there are ambiguities, possibilities, and small delights intertwined with a modest setting.
A reflection on what cinema can mean for each of us, a gateway of notes and images that tell a particular and temporal experience yet maintain their universality.
What experience do we have when we deliberately submit ourselves to watching a film; what tools do we have, but above all, what experience do we allow of our existence?
A film about cinema but especially about the viewers who become protagonists, in the apparent attempt to escape reality, to distance themselves; a film that opens a gateway between fiction and the possibility of encountering one's existence, observed, measured, and traversed alternatively through a transversal and conscious perspective.
Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.
13-Jun-2024 by Beatrice