I am Like a Midwife ? Géza M. Tóth

As we speak in the studio, some of your around 100 awards, together with a certificate about the Academy Awards nomination for Maestro are in a corner, almost hidden from view.

 

Only the heaviest pieces are here because I did not want them to accidentally fall on one of my children at home. Even the most prestigious award is only important in a given moment. It is like a Christmas tree and its decorations: one year I may be the decoration, I might shine on the top like at the Academy Awards ceremony where those 100 nominees decorate the current ?tree?, but the decorations much less represent the Christmas tree than the tree itself, even when bare.

 

 

Indeed, it would drive you crazy if you think that you can stay on the tree, or will shine on even after the decorations are removed. It?s best if I can just be happy understanding that for one evening I will be a decoration but they will remove me the day after Christmas. Perhaps I will be put up again one day, but will certainly not stay there all the time. At most, those who were near me will remember me.

 

 

My mother is a paediatrician who works night and day, and my father is a university teacher with five specialisations who headed the Veszprém County blood donor service. Thus, in addition to medical certificates he also needed some economic skills. The understanding at home was that being a doctor was not a privilege but a duty. On my mother?s side, the family was an important dynasty of pharmacists. I grew up in Veszprém and spent my summers at nearby Alsóörs, so at the time I could also imagine becoming a pharmacist there. A nice, responsible work - it was something I could prepare for. In the meantime, I took up playing cello and double bass quite seriously, plus I would write regularly and ?direct? theatre and film, living a life that I considered normal. We would play in a string quartet on the weekends. Recently, on my father?s 70^th birthday, all three children and eight grandchildren came together and we had a great home concert session. Eventually, I applied to study biology but a girl at school kept bugging me to also apply to the College of Applied Art. Because she wanted to go there.

 

 

I did not understand a word at the entrance exam because they had courses, such as silicate industrial design and animation. I had no idea what these meant. I had graduated from the Lovassy László Secondary School in Veszprém which had a science orientation. They never used the word animation there. They accepted me to study architecture at the college because I best understood the exam test questions in that specialisation. But after my first, preparatory, year, I met Marcell Jankovics whose films I admired and I asked him to take me in his class. He initially said no but we had some discussions and he eventually accepted me. Three of us started the course but I was the only one who finished.

 

 

Simultaneously with animation, I took up teaching and I gave lessons right from the first year. Since I received no money from home, I had to support myself from what I made in addition to my scholarship. I became increasingly interested in teaching and I had an idea that I would go back to Veszprém and become a drawing teacher.

I realised in Annecy that this is indeed an interesting world and so I enrolled in a master class studying under Sándor Reisenbüchler. I taught conductor trainees at the Pető Institute between 1994 and 1998 and developed a way to include traditional handcrafts in conductive education, also utilising the joy of play. I also started teaching at the College of Applied Arts and in 1994, I researched British media training in London. I visited one of the world?s most important animation filmmakers, John Halas, with whom I had studied previously on a scholarship. I interviewed him and he kept me as an assistant, working and staying with him for two months. I was his last assistant.

 

 

We originally planned to start a family with my wife Éva there and return to Hungary a few years later. But three days after Halas?s death, we did not want to stay anymore. I only returned later, when I spent a year in London as guest teacher at the Royal College of Art.

 

 

Ikaros was the accompanying film for The English Patient in 1997 and I felt that the Berlinale opened up the world for me. Annecy and the Berlinale represent a serious platform. I really appreciated being there at such an early stage in my career. I was bathed in happiness when we gave a joint press conference with director Anthony Minghella. I understood its significance and it encouraged me to continue.

 

 

When the monopoly of Pannónia ended, I was given the task of redefining the training for animation at the college in a way to develop a department that is independent of the studios. This was more or less completed by 2005, so I stepped down from being the head of the department and have only taught there since. I still find new tasks in teaching exciting. From September, the University of Theatre, Film and Television will launch a new MA course in motion picture and visual design and I will head that course. I am interested in every new beginning, whether it?s creative work or teaching. With new projects I always try to find a stage where I feel I still do not know anything. It is very interesting.

 

 

In this respect there is no difference between an autonomous short film and a series made from someone else?s book. I consider all works as if they had always existed and my task is only to help them come to this world. With the least damage possible to the ?child?. I am like a midwife. My job is to find a good interpretation for the issue brought up by the film, whether it is about a one-off film, an applied project or one of my students? productions.

 

 

Erika Bartos has been so successful with the book Bogyó and Babóca because she would emphatically tell tales to children or listen to them telling tales. I am interested in children?s worlds. Next to visual communications, I also received a doctorate in pedagogy: one of my main research areas at ELTE University was how children can interpret various media contents. I recently received an interesting email from a young mother. She said that they accidentally saw my film Ergo on Duna TV and even though it?s not at all for children, her young child, who can barely walk, could not get her eyes off the screen. The child watched the entire 12-minute film and when the small figure died, he started crying. The mother asked me where they could watch the film now since all they could do was watch the child at the time.

 

 

We held some test screenings where 35 minutes, that is seven five-minute episodes with the main titles and end titles, were shown with only small intermissions. The children seemed to really enjoy them. That?s what encouraged me to show the whole in the cinema. Each five-minute episode is a complete story. If we show the 13 episodes one after the other, its dramaturgy has a path but at the same time, they are short stories with short breaks. On television, there will be two 13-part series, with each episode shown one at a time.

 

 

There is little distribution potential in these short films. In the old days of television, people would look through the programme magazine and mark what they were interested in, then made the effort to sit down and watch the programme when the time came. Today television is different. There are programmes shown simultaneously on hundreds of channels. People watch snippets of programmes and keep changing between the channels with the remote. Short films, including animation films, are not fit for television anymore. If you catch it let?s say in the fourth minute, what will you make of it? News, quizzes, sport events and games are the right things for television because it?s enough to watch only snippets of them.

 

 

At festivals.

 

 

Only if you specifically look for them. You are unlikely to come across them by chance. Public television and commercial channels in Hungary should make more of an effort and get involved in feature-length animated films or series. Hungarian studios are unable to create films locally in any other way. The role of public service and commercial TV channels would be important to make orders to the Hungarian animation filmmakers. Unfortunately, this does not work smoothly in Hungary. We now have a preliminary contract with TV2 for Bogyó and Babóca but many such orders should be made. Because Hungary?s animation professionals have a lot of talent to show.

 

 

It premieres on August 12, which will be followed by a DVD release, and the first 13 episodes will be shown on TV from December. If 40 or 50 thousand tickets are sold in the cinemas, if enough families with children go to watch the film, that would be a nice success.

 

 

We are the distributor. We cannot afford to have an external distributor because we fear that the balance of spending and ticket revenues will just about break even. I would happily make my own individual films in the big world but I am also responsible for KEDD studio which I created and for the people working there, so I am first of all a manager now. That?s the only chance for me to do what I like and what my job is in the long term: to create films of a decent quality to audiences.

 

Interviewer: Erzsébet Eszéki / Photo: Dániel Kováts