Jameson CineFest in Miskolc

The 14th annual Jameson CineFest, opened with the screening of ‘Shortcuts’ aka ‘Cutting it Short’ (1981) in the northeastern Hungarian city of Miskolc with the director, Jiøi Menzel and the leading actress, Magda Vásáryová as special guests.

The Academy Award winner director is this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award winner, while the actress and diplomat Vásáryová has been chosen as the recipient of the Europe Award, founded last year. Menzel is one of the most influential figures of the Central European cinema. His first movie ‘Closely Watched Trains’ won the Oscar in 1968. The film ‘Larks on Strings’ shot one year after the Oscar was withheld by censors and released only in 1989 and that year, it won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale – something that had been unprecedented before.

Magda Vásáryová was just 19 when she played the leading role in the Czech film, ‘Marketa Lazarova’. The nearly three-hour widescreen epic is considered by critics and film historians as one of the European masterpieces of the golden years of the 1960s. A few years back, the premiere of its digitally re-mastered copy was a true headliner. The actress is not only acknowledged for dozens of great roles but also for her career in politics. After the fall of the Communist regime, she became a politician and a diplomat, and even a presidential candidate in Slovakia. She also served as ambassador (first of Czechoslovakia and then of Slovakia) and State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia. The actress and politician speaks several languages and has a truly European point of view. After Juliette Binoche in 2016, she is named Ambassador of the European Cinema by the 14th Jameson CineFest in 2017.