8th Brazilian Independence Day Festival Presents:

"A HUNGARIAN PASSPORT"

Thursday, September 4 at 7pm

Admission is FREE!

A Hungarian Passport (Um Passaporte Hungaro)

Directed by Sandra Kogut
Brazil/France/Belgium/Hungary 2001, 35mm, color, 72 min.
Portuguese, French, and Hungarian with English subtitles

Speaking over the telephone with the Hungarian consulate, Brazilian
filmmaker Sandra Kogut asks, "Can someone who has a Hungarian grandfather
obtain a Hungarian passport?" The administrative process of obtaining a
passport becomes the narrative thread of this disarmingly unaffected film
diary. Kogut creates a private journal of her trips to and from Brazil,
Hungary, and France, recording the Kafkaesque experience of her frustrating
and often hysterical attempts to jump through the necessary bureaucratic
hoops. On the way, she explores a painful family history of forced
emigration and a hidden legacy of anti-Semitism as she confronts some
essential questions: What is nationality? What is a passport for? What
should we do with our heritage? How do we construct our history and our own
identity?

The Art of Sandra Kogut
Interweaving elements of documentary and fiction, of the experimental and
the essayistic, and of the personal and the collective, Sandra Kogut has
emerged as one of the most distinctive cultural filmmakers at work today.
Her films are by turns whimsical, lyrical, and finely ironic? Lighthearted
and playful, yet also momentous and serious. A Brazilian of Hungarian
descent who now resides in Paris, Kogut, with seeming effortlessness,
traverses and transgresses boundaries of personal, cultural, and national
identity in works that not only explore the construction of multiple
affiliations but expand our conception of multiplicity itself. Infused with
an elusive tenderness toward their subjects - a sentiment altogether rare
in contemporary nonfiction - Kogut's frames become hybrid spaces that
wittily illuminate the manifold relationships between individuals and their
images.

More info at www.verdeamarelo.org

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