Rocktérítö

Zu ROCKTÉRÍTŐ kursieren verschiedene internationale Verleihtitel, von denen THE ROCK CONVERT die Sache wohl am besten trifft. Mit seiner Videokamera in der ungarischen Musikszene unterwegs traf Xantus auf den Sänger Tamás Pajor, der nach besten Kräften auf Enfant terrible machte, dann allerdings unvermutet zum christlichen Glauben fand. Xantus erzählt nicht chronologisch, sondern beinahe surrealistisch von diesem Wandel, mit verschiedenen narrativen Einsprengseln, mit denen er die raue Dokumentation zudem zu einer Hommage an die Filmgeschichte (vor allem die frühe!) macht. Eine großartige Zeitkapsel, auch als Zeugnis einer beginnenden Elektronisierung der Bilder. (Bert Rebhandl)

In Anwesenheit von Péter Janesch (Set Designer), Simon Petri-Lukács und Anna Babos (Kurator:innen).

ROCKTÉRÍTŐ blends cinematic and musical forms to capture the endgame of real existing socialism in the last months before the regime change. The film follows Tamás Pajor, one of the most iconic figures of the 1980s Hungarian underground, and was partially shot at the Fiatal Művészek Klubja (Club of Young Artists), a legendary location for the Hungarian samizdat culture. ROCKTÉRÍTŐ is one of the rare documentaries to show this place, while doubling as a treasured musical record of Pajor’s performances with the band Neurotic, including his paradigmatic song “Brék”. The direct cinema style of the musical documentary is subverted by the fictional parts, where the characteristic faces of Budapest’s samizdat life are placed in occult settings and subjected to cinematic trickery that evokes silent cinema. During the filming of the documentary Pajor disappeared, and was found to have converted to Christianity as a member of the Faith Church. The Faith Church community functioned illegally before the regime change, but is now one of the Hungarian churches to receive the most support from the Orbán regime. Pajor recently left the Church and articulates his critique of the system in slam poetry. (Anna Babos & Simon Petri-Lukács)