“To put it briefly: Centaur is the best film ever made in Hungary. The fact that it was made in this country is significant because the film is actually about it. And, startlingly enough, it is not a disadvantage to it. And ‘ever’ means that in the light of the well-known facts, it is absolutely impossible that yet another similarly relevant and valid film could be made in this environment...” [...]”The centaur is a good patriot. His psychological processes befit a citizen. He is a smart learner. And he applies the law, since he is not an aristocrat, but belongs to the people. He is not an outsider, but belongs there. The people of centaurs love the system, which trains everyone to be the enemy of the other: to be individual and autocratic. This opens a wide space for the rebel and fits individual interests of all sorts. Here is a state that resembles the image it has created of itself: a fictitious reality, a centaur. A factory that is exactly like its workers. Where is the contradiction here? There isn’t any”.1

"Tamás Szentjóby, a prominent conceptual artist who is now slowly fading into the mists of legends, completed one of the most important films of his career, Centaur, in 1975, and was forced to emigrate shortly afterwards. Béla Balázs Stúdió only managed to snitch the copy out of the central Cultural Committee’s vault some ten years later, and so, almost a decade and a half after its production, Centaur is slowly making its way into Hungarian film history. I am aware that only a few people have seen this film, as it is mostly only known about or at most its script can be read (in. Jelenlét. Szógettó. 1989, Budapest). But perhaps it is precisely because of its obscurity that we should pay attention to this film, as it is one of the most conceptual, sober and funny montages in the history of Hungarian cinema in the 1970s."2

Tamás Szentjóby's short film Centaur was made at the Béla Balázs Studio, which supported freer experimentation, still, the film was banned before its completion. Tamás Szentjóby was arrested for his opposition activities in 1975 and expelled from the country. The only copy of the film was sealed. György Durst, secretary of Béla Balázs Studio at the time, found the confiscated work in 1983, and immediately made a copy to rescue its value. The digital reconstruction of the seriously damaged film material occurred in 2009 on the initiative of, and coordinated by, the Ludwig Museum / ACAX. The immediate reason for the restoration was the invitation of the film to be a part of the 11th Istanbul Biennial, where its presentation received significant international attention. The first screening of Centaur, in its original and completed form in Hungary in 2009 was organized by Ludwig Museum.

The screening is the closing event of the exhibition IPUT - International Parallel Union of Telecommunications): INFINITESIMAL EROS, or Sexual Voting Booth Counterrevolution for Children on view until 5 January at Trafó Gallery.

Tamás Szentjóby: Centaur (1973-75/2009)

digital copy from 16 mm film, 38 min

cinematographer: János Gulyás, editor: Éva "Etikus" Vörös

With English subtitles.

tickets: 1984 Ft in advance, 2000 Ft onsite