A Beginner's Guide to Hungarian Animated Cinema 

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As a hungarian, and as somebody who grew up on these movies I am very glad this video exists

As a Hungarian I miss The Mézga Family (Mézga család) from this video. It is probably the most famous childrens cartoon from Hungary. Especially the 13 episode mini series The Mézga Family on vacation (Vakáción a Mézga család). Still one of my favorites to watch every summer even as an adult. So much fun. Also I recommend Cat City (Macskafogó) to everyone. Great video, love from Hungary❤

The story of the tragedy of man is truly a must read for everyone. I was so surprised when I found out it's not from a world famous writer and that it's not common knowledge everywhere around the globe.

Here I am, suddenly fascinated by Hungarian animation, of which I hadn't heard until 30 minutes ago. Thank you for your channel, all your videos are full of wonderful discoveries!

Jankovics's probably most widely known work is the Magyar népmesék (Hungarian Folk Tales), which aired in several countries, including Italy

Marcell Jankovics was also a director and sometimes animator in earlier episodes for "Hungarian Folktales" which can be found now on RU-vid. I knew that artstyle was familiar when I saw the Johnny Corncob

Cat City was my favorite animation as a child of the last years of the USSR. Went to see it at the cinema 4 or 5 times

As a hungarian I'd like to add that the "Tragedy of man" animated movie completely follows the original 19th century version. Yes, even the future, this is why Madách Imre (or Imre Madách if you will) was not only a genius writer but he pretty much predicted the future of mankind. I highly recommend you to read the book, its been my personal bible ever since Ive read it first.

Jankovics's movie The Tragedy of Man is the ecranisation of the drama with the same title written in 1863 by Imre Madách, considered the greatest Hungarian drama play.

I think it's worth mentioning that The Little Fox (Vuk) also had a followup sequel in the 2000s names "A fox's tale". Not because said sequel was good (it's often referred as the worst Hungarian animated movie by many) but because of the effects it had on the local industry as a whole. The decision to make the movie entirely CGI was random and uncalled for. All the animators of the studio never had any CGI experience before, and many of the learning/problem-solving happened throughout the production. I happen to know some of the animators personally, now being experienced CGI-veretans and basically having to work on that movie as their first ever job. They said the entire project was bombrushed. The producers were really pushing production in a race against Egon & Dönci, so that the Vuk sequel can be the "first ever Hungarian fully CGI movie" (it still couldn't claim the title and came out around a month after Egon & Dönci). Thus all animators were extremely overworked without anyone to provide proper knowledge and direction in the CG workflow. Basically every single problem was solved by the animators and modelers, guidance and direction from the movie's actualy director/writer was non-existant. The end result was a movie bleeding from a thousand wounds. Weirdly enough, the obviously rushed visuals were still not the worst part of the movie, rather the obnoxious and tone-deaf script trying desperately to be "hip" and "aimed at modern generations" while ending up being absolutely cringey. Viewers called it a disgrace to shame the beloved novel and the original animation this much. The original novel's author, István Fekete wasn't alive to see it, however his wife claimed she didn't approve any of the script, and the writer pitched a completely different idea to her about "honoring her late husband's most beloved work" before production. To make it worse, while Egon & Dönci was a work of an indie studio, the Vuk sequel was (mostly)government-financed and people were really upset finding out the amount of tax money spent on this abomination. This movie probably flopped the hardest in the history of Hungarian media in general. Ever since that, there was no attempt by the country to produce another fully-CGI movie.

Finally, my home country! Also, Tragedy of the Man is just amazing. It is actually an adaptation of a Hungarian play by Imre Madách by the same name. Great video anyways

Cat City is one that everybody knows in Hungary. Some of its lines transpired in the everyday speech even today (37 years later). Snow White has a "Hungarians only" gag: every character has the face of existing Hungarian actors whom also provided their voice to those characters. (and on top of that the seven dwarfs faces can be found also on characters from the castle). The humor is top notch too. (Poking fun even at Disney)

The beginning animation is just so gorgeous. I miss hand or hand painted attempts like this. Just now, I was on a spree of impression videos relating to Puparia which is an anime dominantly drawn with colored pencils and it's surreal which I love. That's exactly what the golden age of European animation, as what I'll call it here, did. The little mermaid from Soyuz was just so uncanny that it easily became a masterpiece.

The Mézga Family is the best thing to come out of Hungary, I was in Czechia earlier this year, they kept playing episodes back to back on one of the channels.

Szaffi is my favorite cartoon ^^ I even named one of my cats Szaffi :'D

As a Hungarian, thank you very much for making this! I really loved your Soviet video too, and had no idea you would make this, needless to say I'm mindblown.

As a hungarian and somebody who learned animation and animation history…from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. ❤so glad this video exists. These people were legends. Although Kovásznai’s work (exept Foam Bath) still gives me the creeps… I just cant connect to his works emotiomally. One of my fave Hungarian cartoon is the Chequered eared rabbit (Kockás fülű nyúl). Its about a living green colored plush bunny who helps children resolve their daily problems in the most wholesome and sometimes comedic way. It was written by Veronika Marék and directed by Zsolt Richly. Its a silent cartoon so ther is only music and visuals but boy its so entertaining to watch. Its my comfort cartoon since this very day and means a lot to me alongside Mazsola and Tádé which is a puppet show about a green pig and a pink guinea pig written by Ágnes Bálint (the green pig called Raisins if I want to translate is )who are living with and elf called Manócska (Elfy is rough translation) in a pumpkin house. This one had dialog and this was also so wholesome and funny and there was also a lesson to learn at the end. There were so many cartoons I loved. Im already tearing up just be writing about them. And still to this day there are amazing hungarian animations Toldi’s animated adaptation (On which Jankovics has worked on but sadly he died before he could see the finished film) and there is also Műanyag Égbolt (Plastic Sky) that also released this year. I even know somebody from uni who worked on it as a shadow animator. Its so fantastic to see how so many peoples’s work when united creates a masterpiece

Wowie! Wow! Wow! Wow! My father was Hungarian and I never knew his people had such a rich history in animation. I had no idea that some of my childhood favorites ("Princess and Goblin" and "Felix the Cat") were from Hungary. And I love Moebius, so I will definitely be checking out "Time Master" sometime real soon. PS: Thanks for mentioning Terry Gilliam. Love a majority of his work. Guy has a great heart when it comes to making films.

You just gave me dozens of film to watch. I wasn't aware of the richness of Hungarian animated cinema. Thank you so much!

Great compilation. Only one thing I miss from the Marcell Jankovics part is the "Hungarian Folktales" (Magyar népmesék) series. It has the same style with lot of transformations and mythological references but it is less psychedelic than the ones you showed and has more humor.

The Son of the White Mare is based on hungarian folklore story, and the Tragedy of the Man is based on a hungarian writers poem. :) Good video!

Fehérlófia, next to Jonny Corncob, is my alltime favorite animated movie, when it came out on Blu Ray in 2021 I immediately had to get my hands on it and it 100% payed out for it's visual beauty alone, I have never seen anything comparable. I love this Movie for it's typical fairy tale story telling and Nomadic cultural influences, maybe because my ancestors were Nomads too, I guess the wandering people all got something in common after all...

I gotta say that dreams and psychadelic experiences line up very well thanks to the subconscious; and these animators had a clear ability to pull from the unconscious for the sake of relating to their fellow man. Thanks for the recommendations!

It's amazing and heartwarming that many of these films and shorts have recently been restored, discovered internationally, and also that there's now a lot of info available about them. Just a few years ago, I had to dig deep into all sorts of random website articles, interviews, online newspaper archives and Pannonia Studio's production journals to find any background information on films like Son of the White Mare or Foam/Bubble Bath. And a lot of these films were only available as low quality TV recordings or badly miscolored VHS rips. When I read that they are being restored and released to an international audience, I could hardly believe it. It's a shame that it took several decades and most of their creators have since passed away, but at least the films, and thus the creators' legacies, are now in the spotlight. I'll say though, it's disappointing and also baffling that some of these restorations still have no easily available Hungarian release. They're only being released in the US and a few other places like the UK, Germany or France. Hungary only has a couple DVDs, and sometimes the films air on television. Guess there's no market for the Blu-ray versions here. Regardless, this is a fantastic recap that will hopefully reach a lot of people. Can't wait for you to eventually cover the TV shows too. Sadly, some of the more obscure ones can be hard to find these days, a lot of them were recently removed from RU-vid, including the account of the late Líviusz Gyulai who had shared his cartoons for free shortly before he died. Also, while many shows are extremely simplistic and some are dialogue-free, others might be pretty confusing to non-Hungarians. Especially the Mézga family cartoons, Kérem a következőt! (aka Dr. Bubó) or Krisztofóró, as most of their dialogue consists of untranslatable puns, wordplays and cultural references.

A couple of these Hungarian films have had recent American Blu-Ray releases thanks to the notable efforts of great companies like Arbelos (Son of White Mare, Johnny Corncob) and the ever-incredible Deaf Crocodile (Heroic Times and Cat City)

Cat city made it to the UK on video and had always been one of my favourites, massive nostalgia when I saw the thumbnail 😂 Edit: wait...there's a sequel?!

As an add on: talking about Hungarian animations one must talk about Pannonia Film or Mafilm as well. The way they were able to bring and promote their animations in the west was brilliant. Same way the Czechs used to do it. But Pannonia was also the creative and artistic backbone in those days. They also did groundbreaking co-productions bridging the east and the west in the early 80ies. The Fly was also produced by Pannonia.

Az ember tragédiája is based on Imre Madách's 1862 drama, also called Az ember tragédiája

God I am so glad that I can recognize almost all of these, as I am Hungarian myself and grew up watching these movies on CDs, TV or VHS I miss when we made actually good movies

The Tragedy of man is actually based on a Hungarian play. While there are no explicit scenes from Hungarian history in the play, it is a rather famous one in Hungary. Also, one interesting thing about Jankovic is that while some of his movies were a flop, his television series of Hungarian folktales ("Magyar nepmesek") drawn in the same style is very popular.

I fell in love with Hungarian animation a few years ago. Son of the White Mare is probably my favorite animated movie ever. MUBI also had a cool collection of shorts last year, including Babfilm and Pánik shown here. Also, good timing on this video with Deaf Crocodile releasing Cat City on Blu-ray this year. I haven't seen that yet but I'm looking forward to it.

I know American animation gets the most attention out of most of the world, but I would love to see a video on lesser known works of American animated cinema that are notable and worth remembering.

Funny how a lot of the animated feature films aimed at kids were released in Italy as well, we also have the best foreign dub of Cat City ever made but they've all been forgotten since. You can still see the vhs tapes at thrift stores, unloved and left for scrap as they couldn't hope to compete with the influence of american animation.

Only now I discovered for myself Marcel Jankovics, but it's enough for me to know, that he is objectivly the best animation director of all time.

Wow I actually didn't knew Hunagry was known for movies and animations. Lots of repsect from Romania.

My hungarian friend sent me this video, and I can't say I'm disappointed. Amazing history, these movies look gorgeous.

As a Hungarian 3D Artist I really appreciate this video. Reminded my childhood and there are a few here I did not about.

You missed probably one of the most famous tv shows "Hungarian Folk Tales" Which is available in both english and hungarian and is one of the longest running hungarian animated series. Me and most of my peers grew up watching it on the weekend mornings and their entire catalogue of episodes is available for free, in english, here on youtube. Otherwise you made a good list.

Son Of The White Mare is a masterpiece!

Woo! More for my watch list. Europe really utilized the freedom of animation especially in the 60s-80s as an art and story telling medium, I'll always be fascinated and inspired by these works. I hope you will do more of these animation look backs.

Heroic Times was also the first animated feature to win an award at the annecy animation festival!

It disturbs how much incredible animation there is that I have never heard of

Just a note on The Tragedy of Man. All the spoken lines in the animation are from the original theatrical work from the 19th century, presented without change (but some lines were cut). Yes, even the last two scenes in the future are depicted in the original play, although the visuals are different (the dystopian future is a Phalanstery, and in the Space scene Adam is just drifting into space, without actually being turned into a spaceship, yet Lucifer does say he is turning into a machine-god). So actually very little if any freedom was taken in the animation regarding the original work, except the inclusion of modern cultural references and the Orwellian depiction of the dystopic future.

I never knew The Princess and The Goblin was Hungarian! That was a treat, getting to learn something while I learn something. Thank you for this video!

Just a few second of Animation from the Sisyphus short made me cry. The bulk muscle turns into thin lines while hyperextending is painfully and precisely reminiscent of how I feel when I am working hard toward something. Even though The Twig moment is the moment of success, because you are drained from the buildup, it is a moment you feel vulnerable and most weak and breakable. It can be a feeling of being loose and free. I have always loved animation, but I feel humbled by this true genius that can carry such impact in a few short seconds.

I appreciate the effort you put into pronouncing the hungarian names correctly!

Son Of White Mare was the favorite tale of my childhood, my mother read it me thousand times... and I couldn’t resist crying on the animated version. Such beautyfull and symbolic, a great proof of the less is more rule.

Даже подумать не мог о том, что видел в детстве столь много венгерских мультфильмов!

I'm a hungarian and i consider myself a fan of animation in general, and it baffles me that i wasn't familiar with almost half of these works, especially a lot of the new ones. Thank you so much for making this incredible video and shedding some light on the topic, it is greatly appretiated!

i watched the Cat city movie when i was really young and i remember having a little crush on the cat with the metal hand ...... and on one of the girl rats lol. Recently watched it again and now i love the movie even more than before. I think i had a cd of the movie.

Thanks so much for actually pronouncing the Hungarian names right! It means a lot after hearing so many butchered names in video essays

I think in marcels Sisyphus the transformation is in the rock where the work transforms from a challenging but manageable stone to an unwieldy one

I remember seeing "Time Masters" in a cinema, on some international cartoon festival. These creepy faceless aliens haunted my nightmares for decades

Yay my home country! 😊 Spontaneous surge of patriotism aside, I watch a lot of animation from many different nations, but I genuinely think Jankovics is probably the greatest there erver was. No one comes close to his unique style blending dream-like imagery, hungarian and steppe nomadic motifs and themes, the oneness of entire worlds emphasised by the constant transformations and movement of things into eachother etc. Another thing I really like about his animation is how unashamedly and clearly hungarian-in-essence it is. When I watch a lot of western or eastern european animations, they have a very "universal" style that makes them hard to differentiate. But when I'm watching something like Fehérlófia, János vitéz, Magyar népmesék, Regék a magyar történelemből (an underrated perosnal favourite) etc. it is quintessentially hungarian. You could sit down a hungarian person who's never seen any animation before, and I think even he could quickly see it as something of his own. Thank you for the video, great work as usual!

I love Macskafogo and Foam Bath 1979 (despite being a Michigander). So, thank you for talking about Hungary's wonderful world of animation!

Very interesting. The Hungarian Pannonia Film Studio produced a lot of quality animation broadcast in many countries in Europe. I would be curious to see recent animation from Hungary.

also a bit of an addendum. there are boatloads of very successfull (and now legendary ) cartoons - mostly series - made for children from hungarian animators, directors : Vizípók,Kukori és Kotkoda,Mekk Elek az ezermester or A Mézga család ,just to name a few.

If you're interested, there're many more missing from this list, for example: Pompom, Mikrobi, Frakk, Kukori és Kotkoda, A nagy HOHOHO Horgász, Mazsola és Tádé, Sebaj Tóbiás, Kockás fülű nyúl, Mézga család and it's many secuels, even one using futuristic ideas, they and many more're all the best of the best from the late 20.century. Many just mentioned Hungarian folk tales, but even the evening children tale's got a great starting song, the TV Maci. Hungary was one of the handmade animation kings in those years. And luckily our children books are the same quality till nowadays. Try them!

I love how we could watch any of the creepy scary and not age appropriate animated movies back then in the 80's and 90's because anything animated was considered a children's movie.

I first saw the The Struggle maybe as a 6-7 year old, and the concept of it just mesmerized me. And it still does every time I see it. It was a nice essay, thank you for your work.

Thank you so much for listing up so many animators and films! Gosh!! They are all so great and wonderful! I've never seen hungarian animation before. This is so fascinating! The Movie "Dalias Idok" with only oil paintings really made my jaw drop.

This video gave absolutely fantastic insights into media that many of us grew up with, it was thrilling to look at some classics through different lenses with you! I'd like to add, your pronounciation of names were quite good, nice job on that front too!

I actually learned a lot from this even as a hungarian. Quite a few of the later mentions triggered some memories of watching them even though I've forgotten them until now.

Wow, amazing video man! I'll sure check Az ember tragediaja, Macskafogo, Les maitres du temps, Hofeher and Ruben Brant. Every time videos about animated cinema i cannot stop myself from thinking "and yet there wasn't anything more worthy of an oscar nomination than Baby boss in 2018". Thank you very much for all these guides!

The new book: Animation Behind the Iron Curtain is a journey of discovery into the world of Soviet era animation from Eastern Bloc countries, is an amazing historic book of the animation in this Soviet Bloc.

Wow! This is simply amazing! Thank you for sharing the works of these brilliant artists with us! And to think I could have died and would never have seen this if not for your video… Some of the images are just pinnacles of creativity and artistic freedom. More people need to see this!

I actually remember watching “The Seventh Brother” a few times as a child, though I had sadly forgotten the name, so I’m glad this video helped me remember it! I hope this video gets people interested in some of these films, especially “Son of the White Mare”, that film is one of my favourite movies period.

Hold on, Hugo the Hippo was **NOT** fever dream??? I remember it from when i was little, but by now I thought I just had a nightmare about watching a cartoon. Jó ég...

Thanks for making this video. Hungarian animation needs more people to know about it.

About Tragedy of Man: the original written drama by Imre Madách is a fundamental piece of Hungarian literature. The storyline and the dialogues are just genius.

love these videos, the company Deaf Crocodile is doing cool work releasing a lot of Eastern European animation lately

Great video! The world of Hungarian animation is certainly an interesting one!

I'm glad you didn't mention Cat City 2 or Vuk 2. It's for the better.

Hungarian animation was likely the best in among the socialist countries. Jankovics' style was indeed captivating, I was devastated to know about his recent death.

I wonder what it is that makes adults more drawn to simplistic and abstract animation styles as opposed to more traditional looking animation.

Thank you for making this! East european animation is fascinating to me, but its so daunting to know where to start.

YES! I watched a clip from Fehérlófia as a kid and ive been looking for it ever since! I thought I lost it.

Thanks. Your presentations are always very thorough in content.

Thank you for the video and for the effort at pronouncing Hungarian names properly!

As a Hungarian myself, i really enjoyed the video! I was even more suprised when you could pronounce the names so good! I haven't grew up in the 60's-90's (actually quite far away from that) but it felt so nostalgic, mostly because i watched or heard of most of them. I did miss some cartoons like water spider wonder spider (vizipók csodapók) and tales about King Matthias (mesék Mátyás királyról) but all i can say that this video is amazing!

Thank you for making those really cool video. Such a pleasure to learn about all those artist and way of art

Love these videos!! I think it would be interesting looking at the history of Czech animation, I've always loved the films that have come from there

you still impress me by the stuff you find, great work m8

I saw a thumbnail with mr Teifeul from Matchakafogo (Cat City) and was like "Someone else cares about this!?" So awesome! Thanks for making this video

Thank you so much for this! Macskafogó is THE ONE for me as long as I know it 😁 Not exactly happy how the second one came out though.

Thanks for this great informative video to share our animations with the world.👍❤

A really well done summary overall! My one point of criticism would be the absence of multiple really famous animated series, such as Mézga család, Mikrobi, Kockás fülű nyúl, Ho-Ho-Ho Horgász, Mekk mester (puppet anim.) Pom-Pom. These animated series were really popular from the 90s into the early 2000s and are a cornerstone of the hungarian pop culture now. But other than that, you've done a great job in my opinion

Thank you for a great playlist to watch ! I'm glad that so many great movies were made not only in Poland, and I can finally watch them :D

This brings back childhood memories I've long since forgotten I had. Thank you.

I love watching these videos for some good recommendations! There's a ton of animation I've just never heard of because it never made it to the US.

These are so cool!!! I never realized how rich of an animation history there was in Hungary. I defiantly need to check these movies and shorts out :D

I missed Csaba Varga (the founder of the Studio Varga) from the artist section. Anyway it was a good and proper video. Thaks ❤

Oh wow, the ember tragédiája looks real imaginative and well done, I'm gonna watch that if I can find it.

This was absolutely delightful. Thanks for introducing me to so many great and influential animators and animated films. I’m definitely going to check many of these out. On a side note, I’d love to see you tackle Danish animation. And Norwegian animation as well (in particular the work of Ivo Caprino)

Macskafogó is a classic, and i'd reccomend it to anybody and everybody.

there's some stuff for me to look forward to watching when i go back to learning hungarian, thank you kindly

Awesome video! I would love to see more videos about hungarian filmography that includes animated series as well, like hungarian folk tales and Mézga family because theyre also very important in hungarian filmography :)) - a very hungarian viewer

I saw several of Macskassy's work on Nickelodeon's Pinwheel 40 years ago. "Pencil & Eraser" still sticks out in my mind.

The video was very informative, you have shown me many artists and their movies which I knew nothing of since before the video( even though I'm Hungarian), so thank you☺️