He was Ulysses and Zorbas, a traveller of the world and a man who enjoyed Life. This is the way, a Greek summarizes the legendary Ferenc Puskas in this entertaining and informative documentary about him. And the Greek loved him because of his years as coach in the club Panathanaikos, as they did love him in Madrid where he played for Real and as they always did love in his native country, at least those connected to football.

For newcomers in football history, who think that the greatest player ever is to be selected among Cruyff, Pélé and Maradona, it is a must to watch this film to get to know a player that this blogger, when a boy, had the pleasure to see in Copenhagen when he came with Alfredo di Stefano, Santamaria and Gento and the rest of the Real Madrid for friendly games. He was as magic as the others with his left foot and loads of goals.

It is impossible to give you the life of Puskas in this short text, and the film does it from birth to death, but the main thread of the biographical film is of course the link to history and the fate of the Hungarian nation in 1956. After having been the captain of the Hungarian national team, and after having won at the Olympics in Helsinki in 1952, and after the triumph of beating England 6-3 on Wembley in London, Puskas was, as all players at that level, a high-ranked major in the army. He was, contrary to some colleagues, not political active but on a trip with Honved Budapest, the club he played for, he decided to stay abroad and not go home to a country that was suppressed, or to a regime that accused him being a traitor of his country. He ends up in Madrid and becomes a superstar in Real, gets Spanish citizenship, plays a few matches for the country before he retires and starts a career as coach in multiple countries, paradoxically all of them run by the military – Spain, Chile, Greece…

The film narrative is constructed within a classical format: archive, interviews with his team mates of the Golden team, voice-off, interviews with his wife, clips from games, clips (not many) with himself being interviewed, text from his autobiography. It is all very well crafted and superbly researched, feels a bit too long sometimes (I could have done without Beckenbauer, Platini, Pélé, who dont really say anything important, and of course there must be other sides and stories about Puskas that we don’t get) yet it has magnificent emotionally strong scenes as when he comes back to Budapest in 1981, after 25 years, and are greeted as the fine man, he was. Generous, warm-hearted, a character who will be remembered for his skills and for his impressive belly that he showed until 2000 in friendly games where he got alzheimer, dying in 2006.

Hungary, 2009, 116 mins.

http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no194/22.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferenc_Puskás

Subtitle: In Search of a Budapest Girl… Take a look at the photo and read this text presentation of the film taken from the IDF website, address below:

“The November 10th, issue of Paris Match in 1956 featured a report on the Hungarian revolution. The special coverage opened with a photograph taken on October 30, on Budapest Múzeum Boulevard. Forty-five years later, Hungarian historian Eszter Balázs and French journalist Phil Casoar decided to trace down the young couple seen in the picture. Who are they? Have they survived the revolution? If yes, is it possible to find them after all these years? The film follows their search for answers.”

And what a life, she had the Budapest girl, who fled Hungary, went to Switzerland and Germany to end up in Melbourne, Australia – as it is unfolded by the two researchers, who are in the picture and travel the world to find and talk to photographers and people who met Yutka, (real name Julianna Sponga), and who also found out that the young man, Gyuri, died even before the photo first appeared.

A reconstruction of a Life, that is what the film is, based upon one photo with several side stories built on basically the photographers who were in Budapest in 1956. Maybe the film does not give an overall perspective on what happened – but the filmmaker makes it important because of his stubborn insisting on finding out through the two researchers, and his characters. Yutka‘s husband in Australia talks, her son talks and gets to know something he did not know about his mother, who died in 1990 and whose ashes were thrown to the ocean. She did not want to be connected to one country, she was a citizen of the world, who fought for justice, a survivor, such a fun person, says her husband to the camera.

Hungary, 2001-2006, 71 mins.

http://www.dokweb.net/en/

This photo was sent to me two hours before World Cup in football kick-off in South Africa. By Don Edkins, producer and distributor and promoter of documentary films in Southern Africa, and a dear guest of all important film events.

He was one of the key persons behind the Steps for the Future initiative as well as the pre-world cup soccer cinema. Both have been written about on filmkommentaren.dk

Good luck South Africa, may it all happen in a peaceful, non-violent way and may the best team win!

Don Edkins is not on the photo, he probably was behind the camera catching his smiling, colourful staff.

http://steps.co.za/index.php

http://soccercinema.co.za/

There are many reasons why a documentary tradition grows or is being established. In the posting below you can read about some interesting people and companies. The one that produced the City Veins film is called BabyDoc and that characterises probably the situation in Piemonte – the documentary is still a baby with some grown up fathers like the companies Stefilm and Zenith, and with some good directors at hand. Anyway, the establishing of a doc film fund in 2007 has certainly helped the development as has the Torino Film festival and several training initiatives.

The Doc Film Fund had in 2009 542.000€ that resulted in 47 grants for development (22) and production (25). Not a lot of money but a starting point for trying to get more nationally and in the rest of Europe. The emphasis on development is naturally important. The CinePorto where the fund is situated in what used to be a wool factory is a great place for the fund to be and for training sessions like DocuRegio that was hosted generously by the fund leader Paolo Manera.

Photo: The Pink Gang by Enrico Bisi.

http://www.fctp.it/piemontedocfilmfund