ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of 1989, the horizons of Hungarian cinema broadened
to encompass representational styles and subjects that had been avoided,
if not altogether suppressed through censorship, during the post-World
War II decades. A compelling instance of this altered cinematic landscape
is the foregrounding of ethnic, religious, and cultural identities, a prac-
tice discernible in films of the early 1990s and one that has continued to
be embraced by filmmakers interested in moving beyond the allegorical
“Aesopian” narratives of their cinematic predecessors. While questions of
identity have always occupied a position of central importance and con-
troversy in Hungarian history and culture, a specific cinematic language
had been evolving in film production between 1945 and 1989, conjoin-
ing audiences and moving pictures in an unspoken complicity of mutual
and reciprocal understanding with regard to politically and historically
sensitive subjects. A number of postsocialist feature and documentary
films attest to an insistent reframing of spaces of identity, extending and
challenging contemporary discourses of Eastern and Central European
cinemas as a whole.
