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Bus Stop (Bushaltestelle) won a 4-star award at BIAFF 2008
Bushaltestelle (buszmegálló)/ Bus stop - The idea,
the film, the success
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When I shot the movie BUSHALTESTELLE in summer 2005 on a filmworkshop in
the small village Ravazd somewhere in West Hungary, I never expected, that
I would have such a great success with it.
The simple story about three men waiting for the bus and doing nothing except
snoring, eating and dreaming, was shown in 30 festivals in five countries
winning several prizes, such as the 3rd audience prize in Oldenburg on the
Zwergwerk-festival or the jury prize at the Bundesfilm Festival in Wiesbaden.
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When I think back now, it is a wonder that this film actually got realized
and kept the atmosphere I wanted for it. When I took part in the filmworkshop,
held by the famous Hungarian Mediawave company, I had only made action movies
and some short parodies with my brothers and friends. We are a group of hobby
amateur-filmmakers, called HMW-COOPERATION, and we shoot without any finance,
with a lot of ideas and for a few years now with remarkable success.
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But this film would be my first serious work, with actors, who were double
my age, with a real script and taff planning. The situation was more difficult,
as I am German and had to explain everything to everyone in Hungarian. So,
it was no wonder that neither the workshop members nor the actors had a clue
what I actually wanted to do.
I had no plan, no script, just the idea of parodizing the great opening scene
of Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West with old lazy Hungarians
and some children. There was a lot of quarrelling among the other filmmakers,
who wanted to help me, and even the teachers had their own version of my
film and wanted me to realize it their way. |
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Only the leader of the workshop,
the wonderful Jenö Hartyándi, a coryphea in Hungary with contacts
from Siberia to New York, trusted my strange way of shooting movies without
any plan. In a pub he organized an old farmer for the part of the sleeping
and snoring man. Another farmer would play the second man - but on the day
of shooting he didn't appear. Surely he was lying drunk in some corner then,
which was nothing special in this village that was surrounded by wine hills
and where only children were sober.
At least I could trust my young actors,
two boys and a girl, who I picked up on the street. |
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For the other parts I
spontaneously forced the jazz-saxophone player István Grencsó
to act the part of the missing farmer and the owner of a small cinema in
Györ, Zoltán Hajnal, to play the third bored guy. Both are members
of Mediawave.
During the shooting of the movie I had to cope for the first time with the
difficulties of being a director, who has to show strength and authority
but shouldn't offend his actors; who never acted before in any movie and
actually just wanted to escape from the sun and drink a beer.
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The other workshop members were standing around me and all had better ideas
how to shoot the scenes and discussed them during the actual shooting. The
children laughed at the snoring old farmer, cars and trucks went by and I
slowly started to lose my concept of a movie about a bus stop in a quiet,
lost village with a few sounds underlining the desert-like atmosphere.
I
couldn't really explain to the actors what I wanted from them, so I just
let them do it their way. Actually the children understood me better than
the old men, and the shooting with them on the second day was more relaxing.
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At the end, I was lucky that everything turned out so well. Even an old lady
got off the bus at the right moment, which I saw as a good sign from above.
During the editing of the movie I had to remove most of the original sounds
and rerecord them. The fly for instance, which gets caught and squeezed,
is my own modified mouthhumming combined with cracking wood.
Finally I can say, that I am satisfied with the result, allthough there were
a lot of difficulties and chaos during the shooting. |
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It is surprising to
see the movie going through the festivals, but a big pleasure. For me it
is also proof that sometimes one doesn't need a real plan to make a movie,
only a sense of good faces, improvisation and situations and some luck at
the right moment. Also the end of the film was the result of a mistake. The
farmer with the spoons didn't understand my poor Hungarian instructions and
so he kept on playing and acting, while the others had already given up.
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To conclude I can say, that I am really proud of my first 'serious' movie
and I am glad that it was also liked by audiences. Actually it would be nothing
without the great old faces and the natural young actors, who I found in
this small village somewhere in West Hungary.
Lars Henze, May 2008
www.hmw-cooperation.de
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