HU 1969 | Director: Judit Elek Screenplay: Iván Mándy | Camera: Elemér Ragályi | Music: Vilmos Körmendi | Cast: Manyi Kiss, Éva Almási, István Dégi, Lucy Hamvay, Gyuri Korga, Ági Margitai, István Novák, Erzsi Pásztor | b/w | DCP | 76 min | hungarian OV with english SUB | NFI – National Film Institute Hungary

This film is half surreal feature film, half documentary. It deals with the precarious housing situation in Budapest in the 1960s. Elek's first feature film revolves around an “eccentric” older lady (Manyi Kiss) who lives in a Wilhelmian period building with a lift and loggia looking out on to a courtyard in Pest. Her father had lived in the flat. He had been a captain. Surrounded by his furniture, pictures and records, she dwells in another, better world. Her stories are reminiscences of journeys taken together to Constantinople, Madagascar and the “Kalahari islands“. An outside world in which making ends meet also gives the film a “crazy”edge: the funeral of Mr. Molnár, may he rest in peace, was held on the roof. All the while, a teenage girl plays the violin. An unknown man in the kitchen looks for dangerous electric currents. Under pressure from neighbours who wanted her to trade her large flat for a smaller one, the older lady goes to Marx-Square where an unofficial open air apartment market had been established. In the end, she sits on the terrace in the evening with a view of the garden. The change worked out well; the new place is rather good. (Sabine Schöbel, Aufbruch der Autorinnen, 2015)