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To the Friends of Hungarian Cinema

Press release by the Hungarian Filmmakers' Association

This is to inform our friends and colleagues locally and abroad that despite all our aim and efforts to prevent it, the Court of Hungary approved today the agreement which has assigned the property of the Motion Picture Public Foundation of Hungary — film studios, buildings, real estates and the Hungarian Film Laboratory — to the Film Fund governed by Andy Vajna.

The approval of this agreement means that the operation of the Motion Picture Foundation established twenty years ago by the Hungarian film professionals has become impossible and winds up forever the self-governance of our profession.

The Hungarian Filmmakers' Association regards the new structure, which, on the one hand, was established by sheer political will and without referring to representatives of the field and which, on the other hand, does not accept or has any respect for the above principles as unacceptable and illegitimate.

We refuse to accept the idea that a single-channel grant system replaces what has so far been a multi-channel system of subsidies or that a mechanism of centralized distribution of funds is exercised instead of the earlier, professional self-governance based on a broad consensus and reflecting a diversity of tastes. We refuse to accept a system of subsidies ran independently of our profession, one that makes it impossible for its representatives to stand up for the values of the entire field through their delegated curators.

Achievements of the Hungarian film in the past decades require that the Hungarian Filmmakers' Association further attests to a colorful and pluralistic Hungarian cinema and do everything in their power to protect it.

Béla Tarr
President, Hungarian Filmmakers' Association
Budapest, September 4, 2012

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