Director Makk Károly and cinematographer Tóth János will be celebrated through a retrospective organized by the Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Center Bucharest and the festival Ceau, Cinema! between May 28 and May 30 in Bucharest.

The retrospective will take place on May 29 and May 30 at the Elvire Popesco Cinema in Bucharest and will feature three films made by the two Hungarian filmmakers and which were included in the competition of the Cannes Film Festival: Love (Szerelem, 1971), Cat Game (Macskajáték, 1974) and A Very Moral Night (Egy ékőrős éjszaka, 1977). The films will be screened in 4K versions, restored by the Hungarian Film Archive.

The retrospective will be preceded by the screening of Bollók Csaba and Medvigy Gábor's Cinematographer (A Kinematográfus), a documentary about the life and work of Tóth János. It will be screened at the National University of Theater and Film (UNATC) on May 28, with Bollók Csaba and Csere Ágnes, the film's producer, attending.

Film director, screenwriter, and actor Makk Károly (1925–2017) directed over 70 feature films, television films, and short films. In 2001, his film Love was included in the list of "The 100 Best Films of All Time." His films have won numerous awards, and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986 at the Figueira da Foz International Film Festival in Portugal, in 1994 at the Hungarian Film Gala in Budapest, in 2001 at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, and in 2016 at the CineFest International Film Festival in Miskolc, Hungary.

Cinematographer, playwright, screenwriter, and director János Tóth (1930–2019) was a Kossuth Prize laureate and member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. As a cinematographer, his credits include Elegy (Elégia, 1965) and the documentary about Amerigo Tot (1969) by Zoltán Huszárik, as well as the feature films Love, Cat Game and A Very Moral Night by Károly Makk. He directed several films in his long career and was also a scriptwriter for Szindbád (1971, Zoltán Huszárik), one of the most influential works of Hungarian cinema.

"The role of Makk Károly and Tóth János in the Hungarian and international cinema world is truly remarkable; their films raise topical issues, and their formal language and aesthetics are a source of inspiration for today's filmmakers. Therefore, the restoration of their films by the Hungarian National Film Archive and the screening of these films is not only a cultural heritage project but also an opportunity for today's viewers - even from Romania - to rediscover this particularly sensitive and visually powerful period of Central European cinema. Makk Károly and Tóth János are representatives of the "new wave" in Hungarian cinema, which was part of the Eastern European cinema revolution of the 1960s and 1970s - while contributing to the renewal of world cinema," said András László Kósa, director of the Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Center in Bucharest.

(Illustration: the organizers)

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