box office information and location
Presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of the Republic of Hungary.
BÁNK BÁN
Csaba Kael, Hungary, 2001; 116m
"BÁNK BÁN, regarded as the most important musical drama of Hungary's national cultural heritage, has at last reached the screen in all its grandeur in a textbook example of how to turn an opera into a film in a manner in which the two art forms complement instead of canceling out each other. To accomplish this, Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond was lured back to his homeland, which he fled in 1956 during the Hungarian uprising, to shoot his first feature ever in Hungary." - Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
An internationally acclaimed screen adaptation of a classic opera by Ferenc Erkel, BÁNK BÁN tells a story of political and moral power struggles in medieval Hungary. The year is 1213: while King Endre II is waging war abroad, his foreign-born queen, Gertrud, has seized power and is using her influence to benefit her own people. As conspiracies against the Queen begin to be organized, the King's personal deputy, BÁNK BÁN, tours the countryside and discovers the ruin into which the land has fallen. Meanwhile, Bánk Bán hardly suspects that his faithful wife, Melinda, has become the object of the lecherous desires of Otto, the Queen's brother… A magnificently mounted spectacle, sumptuously photographed by Zsigmond, BÁNK BÁN features Eva Marton as Gertrud, Andrea Rost as Melinda, and Attilla Kiss B. in the title role.
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