The President and First Lady were deeply moved by the film, guests at the screening told the Hungarian News Agency (MTI).
The film?s director Krisztina Goda, producer Andrew G. Vajna and executive producer Sándor Demján were present at the screening and the dinner which followed. Other guests included New York State governor George Pataki and the actor Tony Curtis, both of Hungarian descent, Nobel Prize-winning chemist György Oláh, former freedom fighter Éva Szörényi, who now lives in the US, Pál Maléter Jr, son of the martyred defence minister in Imre Nagy?s government during the revolution, the US ambassador to Hungary April Foley, the former US ambassador to Hungary George Herbert Walker and Hungary?s ambassador to the US András Simonyi.
Chairman of the Hungarian American Coalition Maximilian Teleki, another guest at the screening, said the first couple expressed their warm welcome at the reception following.
The special screening was a rare event at the White House and it came at a busy time for the President, with US mid-term elections a little more than a week away. In June, President Bush made an official visit to Hungary to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Revolution.
?Children of Glory? frames the events of ?56 in Budapest with the stories of players on the Hungarian national water polo team. The film starts with a match between the Hungarian and Soviet national water polo teams in the USSR and climaxes with the Hungarian team?s legendary defeat of the Soviet team at the1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne.
Vajna, who moved to the United States at age 12, on the same day as the Olympic match between Hungary and the USSR, said earlier that ?Children of Glory? uses an emotional approach, rather than a political one, to show the impact of the revolution on young people. "I would like this film and its message to reach young people so that they can feel proud of their country's history," Vajna said.
