Father and his three sons: the Bartos family

Zoltan Bartos, an amateur filmmaker and composer of popular dance music made home movies between the end of the 1920s and the middle of the 1950s.

The Bartos family present themselves in a semi-formal way to Zoltan’s camera; children dance in national costume, young wives smile and wave, relatives act out slapstick routines in imitation of ‘the movies’ and solemn groups pay their respects at the cemetary. Holiday destinations, new cars, business ventures and political rallies are all recorded as significant reference points in the life and times of the family.

Peter Forgacs gently manipulates the footage, playing with the speed and order of events, adding sound effects, voice over and the evocative music of Tibor Szemzo. The resulting film focuses our attention on both the small intimacies and larger tragedies of the family which are implied but not directly expressed in the original sequences. A couple dancing is slowed down to the point of intense romantic reverie; a woman ages before our eyes, leaving the family via divorce, never to be seen again.

The men of the family, Zoltan, his father and two brothers are captured in freeze-frame portraits, as we learn of their various fates during and after the second world war. Oversize portraits of Lenin and Stalin are carried through the streets; a fascinating dialogue between private and public history.