In Memoriam Imre Gyöngyössy is a homage to the late poet and film director Imre Gyöngyössy. He is best known in Rotterdam for his documentary about the simple old peasant woman Veronika Kiss, A Quite Ordinary Life (1977), that scored highly in the audience poll in 1978 and 1994. In Memoriam Imre Gyöngyössy is not a talking-heads documentary, but more of a ‘posthumous autobiography’, made by Gyöngyössy’s regular colleagues Katalin Petényi and Barna Kabay, his wife and co-writer/co-director. With fragments from his films, poems and reminiscences, a picture is sketched of Gyöngyössy’s life and artistic credo. The poetic, surrealist sequences reflect his commitment, his ethics and his ideas about life and death. Gyöngyössy’s devotion to national myths and Hungarian folk art is also discussed.Gyöngyössy’s life and work reflect developments in Hungary in the last fifty years. Gyöngyössy (born in 1930) acquired his diploma as director and scriptwriter in 1961 and was co-founder of the progressive Béla Balász Studio. In 1980 he emigrated to Germany with Petényi and Kabay. From then on the most important theme in their work was forced exodus, the tragedy of this era. Despite hard years as a political prisoner in Stalinist jails, Gyöngyössy never lost his faith in humanity.
