A total of 200 films were shown at 74 cinemas in 44 cities and towns between August 31 and September 3 for the 3rd Celebration of Cinema. The programme included several premieres and some sneak previews. Most of the tickets were sold for HUF 350 apiece, less than half of the usual price.
The largest number of tickets was sold at the Palace Westend cinema on Saturday, when the multiplex had 12,390 visitors. Saturday also saw the highest sales throughout Hungary, with 125,831 tickets sold. Westend was also the most popular cinema during this year?s festival, attracting 44,320 movie-goers, as against 33,769 last year.
Record interest in the event was also seen outside of the capital, with Cinema City in Győr in northwest Hungary selling 21,157 tickets, 70 percent more than last year. Cinemas in Szeged in southern Hungary, Debrecen in the northeast and Pécs in the south, also recorded big increases in ticket sales compared to last year?s Celebration of Cinema, and a cinema in Dunaújváros, in central Hungary, boasted a five-fold increase over last year.
The Művész cinema in Budapest attracted 2,688 visitors on Sunday, September 3, which was an all-time record for the established art cinema. Compared to an average weekend, the cinema attracted four times more visitors.
At many locations, visitors were pleased to meet star-ushers, and question and answer sessions with filmmakers were also popular, especially for the new Hungarian films ?My One and Onlys? and ?Hungarian Beauty?.
The organisers expect that the many people who enjoyed the Celebration of Cinema festival will return to the cinemas on Thursday, the 7th of September to see the premieres of new films, such as ?Volver? by director Pedro Almodovar, ?Lady in the Water? by M. Night Shyamalan and the documentary ?Freedom?s Fury?, produced by Lucy Liu, Quentin Tarantino and Andrew G. Vajna.
