János Vitéz

An achingly beautiful story with marvelous music and clever political commentary Jankovics’s feature debut (and the first feature-length animation ever produced in Hungary) is a resplendent musical fairytale that mixes the filmmaker’s exquisitely personal, kaleidoscopic visual style with the 1845 epic poem by Hungary’s national poet and revolutionary Sándor Petőfi. Exiled from his village, a valiant young shepherd goes on a swirling, surreal adventure as a soldier in order to reunite with the woman he loves. With its dazzling color palette and unconventional approach to movement, János Vitéz displays the already-breathtaking range of Jankovics’s early animation talent. Newly restored in 4K using the original 35mm camera negative and sound elements by Arbelos in collaboration with the Hungarian Film Archive. An Arbelos release.

Screening with:
Sisyphus
Marcell Jankovics, Hungary, 1974, 3m
Made in response to the difficult production of János Vitéz, Jankovics’s Oscar-nominated short depicts in a single shot the mythical Greek figure’s eternal struggle.