Hungary film fest scrapped as budget cuts bite

Hungary's annual film festival next month has been cancelled because there are not enough new Hungarian movies due to cuts in government funding, organisers said Thursday. "This is the first time that we have not been able to organise our festival," Attila Janish, the head of the Hungarian filmmakers' association (MFDZ), told Klubradio. "There were simply not enough films produced in Hungary last year to compete in the festival," he said. The internationally renowned festival, founded in 1965, had been scheduled to take place on February 7-10 in the capital Budapest. In its place, the MFDZ will put on a selection of Hungarian films from the last 100 days at the Urania cinema from February 1-3. This weekend it will also hold a conference on the state of the national film industry. Around a year ago the association had warned that cuts in funding by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban would endanger the "richness of Hungarian cinema".