After writing a script about the sham trials held against the Jacobins in Hungary, Hungarian director Judit Elek was handed an unofficial ban at the start of the 70s and was unable to shoot any features for a period of eight years. During this time, she made ISTENMEZEJEN, EIN UNGARISCHES DORF (Hungary 1974) and EINFACHE GESCHICHTE (Hungary 1975), the impressive documentary portrait of two girls named Ilonka and Marika, who have to decide various between working in the fields and school and between marriage and moving to the city, without actually being able to take the decision themselves. The two-part long-term documentary was shot in a small village in the northeast of Hungary, where men and boys work in a mine and young girls are married off at fifteen years of age. Not even the birds manage to fly away from here, but are rather caught again and again, as the opening scene of the second part shows. (bg) (12.10.)
