The boundaries of creativity – attempts at reinventing the screenplay and the figure of the screenwriter in the Hungarian cinema after 19561

Abstract

Abstract Why Are Hungarian Films Bad? This oft-quoted question was the title of a film, released in 1964, thematizing the unsolved and confused conditions in Hungarian cinema. This study analyzes the discourse which tried to interpret this creative crisis, as well as attempts to rethink and reorganize the practices of screenwriting after 1956. I will then enumerate the main ideological, censorial and personal issues of the centralized development of screenwriting inherited from the Stalinist era. I consider Why Are Hungarian Films Bad? a contribution to the discourse. After analyzing the debate on the reformation of screenwriting, I will show how theories emerging in the late 1950s and early 1960s created a new frame for the screenwriting practice of the subsequent decades.