Esther Kinsky, SOS cinema in Hungary – Libération

Meeting with the German novelist who in the melancholy “See further” recounts how twenty years ago she bought and briefly renovated an abandoned Hungarian cinema.

It’s the story of love at first sight. One day in 2004, the German novelist Esther Kinsky, then established in Budapest, traveled to Hungary, to the Alföld, this flat region east of the Tisza River, where the filmmaker Béla Tarr shot numerous films, including his Satan’s Tango. In a small town populated by Serbs – many “ethnic groups” live together in this part of the country – she finds refuge in an inn after a storm. An abandoned building nearby intrigues him. “Do you want to buy the cinema?” a man says ironically to him. She says today: “I had a small house in London that I had just sold. I had money for the first time in my life and when I found myself there in this small Hungarian town, I said to myself, only this time in my life can I make a dream come true.” With the help of residents including the former projectionist, the novelist will rehabilitate this cinema, “the Mozi”, reopen it, and bring in films. But the fairy tale is cut short, rewinding the flow of time is a perilous process. See further is the melancholic story with “fictitious details” of this Ave