Kovács, 73, now a resident of the United States, was presented with the 7th Santa Fe Film Festival?s Lumanaria award at a ceremony on Saturday evening.
Kovács studied cinema in Budapest between 1952 and 1956. With his fellow student Vilmos Zsigmond, he filmed the day-by-day events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution on black and white 35mm film. He smuggled 30,000 feet of this film to the West in November 1956, but by that time, the events were no longer considered newsworthy. The footage was not shown until several years later on the CBS television network.
Kovács settled in the United States, where he worked several menial jobs, including making maple syrup and printing microfilm documents in an insurance office, before he made several low-budget films with his old classmate Zsigmond.
His breakthrough came with ?Easy Rider?, starring Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, in 1969. Since then, he has shot than 70 feature films, including ?Five Easy Pieces?, ?The Last Waltz?, ?Shattered?, ?Paper Moon?, ?Shampoo?, ?New York, New York?, ?Ghostbusters?, ?Say Anything? and ?My Best Friend's Wedding?.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
