Hungarian SciFi News

On the air again

2007-02-23T14:43:00.000+01:00

My blog, the Hungarian-SciFi is on the air again! I will post some news as soon as possible. And I decided to change a bit the topic of this blog, I will put some personal posts and notes in the future.

[A personal note: today I finished reading Lord of the Rings (paperback one volume edition) in English. I bought the book in Stansted 14 months ago and I started reading on the plane flying back to Budapest. It took too much time, but I read more books parallel. Here is the book!]

Huge SF Festival and EuroConference in June

2006-05-03T12:20:00.000+02:00

The 7th Atjaro (Gateway) Festival will be held in Budapest 9-11 June, 2006. This early summer festival pertains to literature, movies, television series and gaming. Movies and Hungarian fan films that haven’t been shown anywhere before will be presented to the visitors.

The Special Guest stars are actress MIRA FURLAN from Lost and Babylon 5 and actor ADRIAN PAUL from Highlander and Tracker. The organizers also invited one of the supporting actors from the Star Wars saga GERALD HOME and GARRICK HAGON who has played in Tim Burton’s Batman and in Mission Impossible.

The Atjaro (Gateway) Festival has invited some of the best authors from the European science fiction and fantasy scene. British writer and screenwriter IAN WATSON, Spanish writer and literary translator LUISA MARÍA GARCIA VELASCO, Italian author ROBERTO QUAGLIA and British author HARRY HARRISON, Grand Master of European Science Fiction, as well as editors from European literary and movie magazines.

Attendees will have the chance see the 90-minute Star Wars fan film The Dark Side: Part 2, and numerous movies that have not yet been shown in Hungarian theaters. The first prize winner of the Brussels Science Fiction Festival (BIFFF), the Hungarian short film, The 639th Doll by András György Dési and Gábor Móray will be shown.

The convention has officially received the EuroConference title at the European Science Fiction Society’s (ESFS) annual meeting in Kiev. There will be a special program section in English for SF professional persons (publishers, authors and editors) about European and Central-European SF literature and fandom.

The convention expects to entertain numerous fans and visitors from the neighboring countries as well, so a part of these programs will be enjoyable in English (by dubbing and subtitling) too.

The official website of the convention: http://fesztival.sfportal.hu

Hungarian Short Films Awarded Prizes

2006-05-02T12:37:00.000+02:00

A Hungarian science fiction short has won top awards at film festivals in Amsterdam and Nashville, the Hungarian Film Union announced on Tuesday.

“Doll Nr. 639”, directed by György András Dési and Gábor Móray, was awarded the Black Tulip prize for best short at the 22nd Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival (AFFF), held on April 19-26. It was also awarded the prize for best short film at the Nashville Film Festival, held on April 20-26, the statement said.

The film, which stars Tünde Murányi and Péter Scherer, was recently awarded the main prize at the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Films, and it has already been invited to another festival in Brussels.

The Film Union also reported that Attila Szász has received the best director title for his short film “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t” at the Newport Beach Film Festival in California, held on April 20-30. The festival, in its seventh year, boasted 350 films in competition, including nearly 200 shorts.

The prize was the third awarded to “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t”: it received the best short award in Ojai, California, and the jury’s special prize in Houston last year. The film will show next at a festival in Indianapolis, then in Winnipeg, Canada.

(Source: MTI)

Major changes in the Hungarian publishing market

2006-05-02T12:36:00.000+02:00

During the last months there was important changes around the Hungarian SF publishers. Delta Vision which prints mainly fantasy novels and distributes collectible cards bought up one of the oldest SF publisher, Cherubion (founded in 1991 by István Nemes). Inomi, the publisher of the most successful fantasy novel series MAGUS and science-fiction series Mysterious Universe quit from publishing business. The MAGUS novels now are published by Tuan, the Mysterious Universe series are printed by Graal Books.

Nominations for Hungarian SF Award finished

2006-04-27T19:58:00.000+02:00

On 20th April the nomination period ended for the Péter Zsoldos Award, which is the national award for the best novel and short story published in Hungary. The readers can nominate any science-fiction novel and short story published in printed form in Hungarian and more then five hundred copies from April 2005. The works are considered by a jury during the next couple of months and the winners will be awarded in August at the HungaroCon.

The Association representatives said they’re satisfied with the current nomination list, there’s a lot of short stories nominated comparing to the numbers of previous year. But the number of novels running for the award is still low, which means there’s not too many science-fiction novels published from Hungarian authors.

The Péter Zsoldos Award was founded by Avana Association in 1998. In 2005 the award was given to Sándor Szélesi (Before Darkness; novel) and István Nemere (Just One of Everything; short story).

AXN starts a sci-fi channel in Central-Europe

2006-04-21T12:39:00.000+02:00

The AXN going to start a regional science-fiction channel in Central-Europe, which will be available in Hungary, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria and other countries. They are planning to broadcast mainly TV series and cartoons. The major cable operators will include the new AXN channel into their network automatically.

Eurocon 2008: Moscow and Budapest was in tie

2006-04-19T16:13:00.000+02:00

In Kiev Hungary made a bid to earn the EuroCon title for the national convention (Atjaro Festival) in 2008. At the 28th EuroCon, during the ESFS business meetings Moscow and Budapest received the same ammount of votes (14-14) from country delegates, and finally the orange ballots of non-delegates pushed the title to Moscow.

The members of delegates are deciding every year the place of the two year later EuroCon. The result was a surprise for the Hungarian delegation as well, which means for us the western countries gave a big support to the idea. Hungary will bid next year in Copenhagen again.

Róbert Odegnál won ESFS Award in Kiev

2006-04-19T12:50:00.000+02:00

The Hungarian artist, Róbert Odegnál won the Best European Artist Award at the 28th EuroCon in Kiev. Odegnál is painting covers for SF books and designing comics for years. His latest comic book, The Caller and the covers of the Mysterious Universe books was introduced for the committee in Kiev, and the works convinced the delegates to vote for him in the Best Artist category. The society also awarded the young Hungarian author Tamás Szalai-Kocsis with European Encouragement Award.

Róbert Odegnál’s website: http://www.odegnalrobert.hu/