Miskolc International Film Festival
The Miskolc International Film Festival – also known as Jameson CineFest – is Hungary’s leading international film festival. Its main staff consists of Tibor Bíró, Peter Madaras, Géza Csákvári, and Peter Muszatics.
History
Jameson CineFest was first organized in 2004, receiving its first name after its main sponsor, the Irish whiskey brand Jameson. The festival focuses mainly on young talents under the age of 35. The long feature, short, documentary and animation film competition is screened in different categories. Approx. 5-600 applications are submitted annually for the festival from all over the world, and a preliminary jury selects 50-60 films from this pool into the competition program. The long feature films are selected by Géza Csákvári. Most films screened in this section are invited to the festival, thus the event’s high standard is guaranteed. Each film in the competition program must be a premiere in Hungary. The festival is focusing on American and European independent movies, including the best from Central Europe.
Jameson CineFest is not only a forum for the best young filmmakers and movies: the festival’s CineClassics program (organized by Peter Muszatics, under the patronage of the Oscar winner director István Szabó) highlights famous personalities and filmmakers who come from Central Europe and yet are little-known in their birthplace. Many conferences, exhibitions and retrospective screenings have focused on filmmakers, who made a major career in North America, Paris or London, like Oscar winner Emeric Pressburger (born in Miskolc - he is the grandfather of director Kevin Macdonald), Sir Alexander, Vincent and Zoltan Korda, Gabriel Pascal, or István Szöts. In 2012, Michael Curtiz (Mihály Kertész), the Oscar winner Budapest born director of Casablanca will be placed in the focus.
In the 2013 festival, 75-year-old István Szabó will be the recipient of the Cinefest Life Achievement Award. The festival honours the Academy Award winning director by screening Mephisto, Colonel Redl and Hanussen in succession. The latter screening will be followed by a panel with Szabó's participation. Mephisto in particular was one of the most acclaimed European films of 1981, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, along with further Oscar nominations, Golden Globe nominations and awards at Cannes.
Reception
The festival has always been well received by the Hungarian press and professional critics. Most papers, like the daily Magyar Nemzet, or the leading online magazine index.hu, the daily Népszabadság and also revizoronline.hu say, among others, that Jameson CineFest is Hungary’s leading international film festival. ‘Jameson CineFest accomplished something – from a meager budget by European standards – in the city of steel industry, that is second to none among Hungarian film events’, wrote Gábor Muray in Magyar Nemzet in 2010. According to György Báron’s article published in the leading weekly Élet és Irodalom in 2010, ‘the brilliant film selection at this year’s CineFest was the best of all Hungarian festival line-ups ever’; furthermore the Miskolc film muster was the first among the Hungarian film festivals to have entered the field of the great international festivals. ‘Jameson CineFest needed less than ten years to grow into becoming the most important Hungarian film festival with the best official selection’, wrote László Kolozsi in revizoronline.hu, at the Hungarian National Cultural Fund’s critical site in the very same year. ‘It feels like we were in Cannes… 2011 will be remembered as the year of the turning point in the history of the festival: it became visible in the map of the great European film festivals’ wrote index.hu in September 2011. ‘Great festival, little money, and all the other clichés… Jameson CineFest is not all about that but about dedicated people who are professionals in bringing out the maximum from the minimum’ says the critic of filmtett.ro in her article with the title ‘A Humane Festival’. She continues: ‘Screening something like the 70-year-old film People on the Alps (Emberek a havason) by István Szőts on a festival is a trendsetting event. István Szöts would be 100 next year and talking about him is the celebration of the Hungarian film… Jameson CineFest is proud to do so, either for the profession or the audience… Touching films, intense competition, great conferences, and all in a human voice: this Miskolc joyride in the autumn sunshine was a true tour de force of films, and no one could desire more – but same time, next year, here again!’