Gábor Bódy

Directing

Gábor Bódy

Born — Died

1946-08-30 — 1985-10-24

Place of birth

Budapest, Hungary

Known for

Directing

Credits

30 titles

Gábor Bódy (30 August 1946 – 24 October 1985) was a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, theoretic, and occasional actor. A pioneer of experimental filmmaking and film language, Bódy is one of the most important figures of Hungarian cinema. Bódy was born in Budapest, in an urban middle-class family. He studied history and philosophy at Loránd Eötvös University and later filmmaking at the Academy for Theater and Film Arts. During his university days he became an influential member of the Béla Balázs Stúdió (BBS). He made his first film A Harmadik (The Third) (a documentary about students preparing an adaptation of Faust on stage) in 1971. He established various experimental and avantgarde …

Known for

No artwork available
10.0

Set in the 18th century, this tragicomedy depicts the debauchery of aristocratic officers condemned to celibacy, in the fate of a bourgeois girl reduced to a street slum. Marie, the beautiful young daughter of the decorative arts merchant Wesener, already has a fiancé, the poster merchant Stolzius, but Desportes, an officer in the French army, has his eye on her. At first, Wesener does everything he can to keep the beauty away from his daughter. But Marie convinces her father that the Baron's intentions are honourable. The father thinks it's his chance to marry the girl above his station. But his calculations are wrong.

Katonák

1978

Narcissus and Psyche poster
6.4

Narcisus and Psyche is based on a novel by Sandor Weores which was adapted by Vilmos Csaplar and director Gabor Body for a feature-length film. Borrowing the character of Psyche from mythology and placing her in Europe in the 19th century, the authors give her a "modern" life. She is an attractive young woman - and remains so throughout the film, in spite of one hardship after another. Psyche is libidinous, and her prurient interests shock her staid contemporaries.

Narcissus and Psyche

1980

The Agitators poster
6.8

After the World War I, enthusiastic young people found the intellectual group of Hungarian Communist Party. Their aim is to propagate the communist ideology to the people and get the workers on their side. They have fierce discussions on the new ideas, though their movement is not very successful. They clash with their opposition, attempt to lead people to the Red Army, but without success.

The Agitators

1971

The Dog's Night Song poster
7.0

A priest arrives in a village and give advice and comfort to different people. He meets a wheelchair-bound former representative of the Communist party, a woman who is dying of tuberculosis and an astronomer who sings in a punk band.

The Dog's Night Song

1983

No artwork available
NR

This documentary feature film is set in a two-storey villa, where three generations live together representing four different scales of values and views of life.

Point of Departure

1984

American Torso poster
7.2

In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all.

American Torso

1975

Film credits

Behind the camera

No artwork available
10.0

Set in the 18th century, this tragicomedy depicts the debauchery of aristocratic officers condemned to celibacy, in the fate of a bourgeois girl reduced to a street slum. Marie, the beautiful young daughter of the decorative arts merchant Wesener, already has a fiancé, the poster merchant Stolzius, but Desportes, an officer in the French army, has his eye on her. At first, Wesener does everything he can to keep the beauty away from his daughter. But Marie convinces her father that the Baron's intentions are honourable. The father thinks it's his chance to marry the girl above his station. But his calculations are wrong.

Katonák

1978

Narcissus and Psyche poster
6.4

Narcisus and Psyche is based on a novel by Sandor Weores which was adapted by Vilmos Csaplar and director Gabor Body for a feature-length film. Borrowing the character of Psyche from mythology and placing her in Europe in the 19th century, the authors give her a "modern" life. She is an attractive young woman - and remains so throughout the film, in spite of one hardship after another. Psyche is libidinous, and her prurient interests shock her staid contemporaries.

Narcissus and Psyche

1980

Narcissus and Psyche poster
6.4

Narcisus and Psyche is based on a novel by Sandor Weores which was adapted by Vilmos Csaplar and director Gabor Body for a feature-length film. Borrowing the character of Psyche from mythology and placing her in Europe in the 19th century, the authors give her a "modern" life. She is an attractive young woman - and remains so throughout the film, in spite of one hardship after another. Psyche is libidinous, and her prurient interests shock her staid contemporaries.

Narcissus and Psyche

1980

The Agitators poster
6.8

After the World War I, enthusiastic young people found the intellectual group of Hungarian Communist Party. Their aim is to propagate the communist ideology to the people and get the workers on their side. They have fierce discussions on the new ideas, though their movement is not very successful. They clash with their opposition, attempt to lead people to the Red Army, but without success.

The Agitators

1971

The Dog's Night Song poster
7.0

A priest arrives in a village and give advice and comfort to different people. He meets a wheelchair-bound former representative of the Communist party, a woman who is dying of tuberculosis and an astronomer who sings in a punk band.

The Dog's Night Song

1983

The Dog's Night Song poster
7.0

A priest arrives in a village and give advice and comfort to different people. He meets a wheelchair-bound former representative of the Communist party, a woman who is dying of tuberculosis and an astronomer who sings in a punk band.

The Dog's Night Song

1983

American Torso poster
7.2

In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all.

American Torso

1975

American Torso poster
7.2

In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all.

American Torso

1975

The Legend About the Death and Resurrection of Two Young Men poster
8.0

Gera, a successful Romani painter rejects his token status by dramatically burning his own artwork. He returns to his marginalized community intending to implement social reforms and improve their lives. However, his modern ideas are rejected and misunderstood by his own people.

The Legend About the Death and Resurrection of Two Young Men

1972

No artwork available
NR

Either/Or in Chinatown was commissioned by Video Inn and shot in part at the Western Front during Bódy’s 1984 residency. Based on Danish philosopher Søren Kierkega’s Diary of a Seducer, Either/Or in Chinatown speaks to the impossibility of choice as it follows the narrator’s through days spent in attempts to attain the love of ‘Cordelia’.

Either/Or In Chinatown

1984

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Siblings

1982

No artwork available
NR

The black and white short Private History (1978) by Gábor Bódy is made up of amateur recordings. So what would the presumably well-off people owning their own cameras direct the lens at before the Second World War? On the one hand, their own families, and on the other, their everyday lives, their pride-and-joy cars, Lake Balaton holidays, happily smiling family members. History, which slowly washes away this idyllic world as the rain effaces paint from paper, initially only appears as ‘background noise’, parts of newsreels and an occasional speech by Hitler. The pictures become more sombre as the age also grows darker: marching soldiers and columns of civilians wearing the yellow star pass in front of the camera. Péter Tímár reconstructed the audio on the basis of lip-reading, noises and rattles reflective of the period. This film is the forerunner to Péter Forgács’s landmark series Private Hungary.

Private History

1978

Self-Fashion Show poster
6.8

According to Peter Brook, all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged is for a man to walk across an empty space whilst someone else is watching him. Thus, an empty space becomes a bare stage. However, this raises countless questions about the relationship between reality, everyday presence and role-playing, something experimental filmmakers coming from the 1970s world of theatre dealt with in detail. Tibor Hajas explored the topic in a short experimental film made at BBS.

Self-Fashion Show

1976

No artwork available
NR

The first real video work of Gábor Bódy is about a highly exciting psychological situation from the 1970s, the era of the iron curtain. Bódy and Marcel Odenbach, his friend from Cologne, communicate silently in front of the camera by blowing soap bubbles. The mood is very dramatic, yet the dramaturgy is rather simple. It is a pioneering work in the new narrative direction Bódy initiated.

Conversation Between East and West

1978

Homage to Eadweard Muybridge 1880 poster
NR

A short study of movement in blue.

Homage to Eadweard Muybridge 1880

1980

No artwork available
NR

Students are preparing an adaptation of Faus on stage.

The Third

1971

No artwork available
NR

Bódy Gábor made his experimental film-language series Négy bagatell (Four bagatelles) between 1972 and 1975. Egy bagatell (One bagatelle) is the third part of this series which is a unique experiment to show the film frame's meaning-altering nature. The etude can be divided into two parts. In the first part, we see the dance of a drunk man. The second shows a sociologist's lecture.

Egy bagatell

1972

The Occult Philosophy poster
1.0

An attempt to visualize a secret knowledge about the nature of man —a philo-clip—, through the use of structures of dissociated geometry and laser beams, with direct references to the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci and the work of Agrippa von Nettesheim.

The Occult Philosophy

1983

No artwork available
NR

A video that deals with perspectives; that of a hostage, and that of the hostage takers. The video ends with a philosophical analogy of the capabilities of seeing through video through 2 or more sources.

The Hostage

1982

No artwork available
NR

There is also dancing in this tape but this time it's about the lyric dance of youth and is depicted by Bódy in an unconventional way. Walzer is a poem written by Novalis, the German romantic poet (1772-1801) to mark the premature death of his fiancée Sophie von Kühn. The text of Walzer is recited and appears in a spiral - the spiral of life? Lyric-Clip reflects the transience of youth as borne out by the macabre, dancing skeleton that appears on screen.

Novalis - Walzer

1983

A Statement about Jealousy poster
NR

An early short film from Gábor Bódy.

A Statement about Jealousy

1972

Der Dämon in Berlin poster
NR

The classic Faustian tale transposed to the realm of the digital.

Der Dämon in Berlin

1982

Latest Fashion ('78 Spring-Summer) poster
10.0

Fashion film directed by Gábor Bódy. Screened in retrospective at Alternative Film/Video Belgrade Festival 2014.

Latest Fashion ('78 Spring-Summer)

1978

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Theory of Cosmetics

1985

No artwork available
8.5

Four part experimental film, with sequences concerning dance, Edweard Muybridge's studies of motion, and an addict discussing sobriety.

Four Bagatelles

1975

No artwork available
NR

Experimental film by Gábor Bódy. A woman sings in German on the left as text flashes on a separate frame on the right-hand side of the screen.

Aldrin Opera

1976

No artwork available
4.0

Dancing eurynome (Mytho-Clip) is dedicated to the Greek goddess Eurynome, the child of Oceanus and Tethys. She was the mother of the Graces and of the river-god Aesopus. Eurynome dances on water - and to the music of der Plan. Astrological symbols (an egg, a bird and the suchlike) are added to the image of her mythical dance. In Mytho-Clip (as in Philo-Clip and Lyric-Clip), Bódy exploits video's considerable potential to transform the image.

Dancing Eurynome

1985