I completely agree - take pretty much any country (especially one with a strong film culture like Hungary) and you're guaranteed to find dozens of outstanding films that are unknown in the English-speaking world purely due to accidents of distribution (or lack of it).zedz wrote:Congratulations, but I really have to take issue with the assertion that:How on earth would you know?Outstanding films rarely slip entirely under the critical radar
And doesn't half of Second Run's catalogue disprove this assumption?
As demonstrated above, the Hungarians seem to rate Zoltán Fábri above all their better-known directors, yet I'm willing to bet that very very few UK or US-based critics have even heard of him, let alone seen anything with his name on. Same goes for František Vláčil prior to 2007, and even arguably Andrzej Munk - I first heard of Munk when I read Polanski's autobiography in the 1980s (Polanski was his former AD, and clearly revered him both personally and creatively), but it was at least another two decades before I saw any of his films and realised why he was regarded as one of the country's all-time greats.
(Talking of which, I've heard rumours that Second Run may have another go at producing a decent edition of Munk's Eroica - if you remember, they scrapped their original plans despite announcing a release date after being unable to secure a master that wasn't battered, horrendously contrasty and VHS-quality. A far superior unsubtitled edition has just come out in Poland, so enquiries are being made).