Breaking the Walls. The Representation of Domestic Space in Hungarian Panel-Films

Abstract

Abstract The paper investigates how socialist architecture – both as location and visual text – functions as tool of political criticism in the late socialist cinema of Hungary. Through the textual analysis of the living space in the socialist bloc in Péter Bacsó’s A Pianino in Mid-Air (Zongora a levego”ben, 1976), Béla Tarr’s Family Nest (Családi tu”zfészek, 1977) and Prefab People (Panelkapcsolat, 1982), Péter Gothár’s A Priceless Day (Ajándék ez a nap, 1979) and György Szomjas’s Wall Driller (Falfúró, 1985), the study dwells on the elimination of domestic space in the films which, as argued below, corresponds to the families’ disintegration and so to the failure a coherent, socialist society.