Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles Brings the Best of Magyar Cinema to American Audiences
variety.comChristopher Vourlias As a young boy growing up in Budapest, a town that would come to be known as “Hollywood on the Danube,” Béla Bunyik dreamed of being in the pictures. “I fell in love with movies in Hungary back in the ’50s,” Bunyik tells Variety. “When I was 12 years old, I started to work as an extra in a few movies….
In 1953, I spent a whole summer with a bunch of kids and some of the best Hungarian actors at the time.” He recalls being picked up after school by talent scouts and cutting his teeth on the sets of films like Viktor Gertler’s 1954 adventure-comedy “Me and My Grandfather.” “Seeing how a movie was done was very exciting for me and I was sad when the summer ended, and the film was shut,” he says.
But those formative years sparked a lifelong obsession. “I got hooked.” Bunyik would later emigrate to the U.S., launch a production and distribution company, and co-found the Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles with his late wife, Bonnie Anderle Bunyik.
As the festival prepares to launch its 21st edition, which runs Oct. 27 – Nov. 2 at the Laemmle Monica Film Center, Bunyik — who recently turned 85 — says he’s still enthralled by the silver screen and by the films produced by the Magyar film industry.
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