In the summer of 1989, several tens of thousands of tourists from communist East Germany arrived in Hungary. They were profoundly embittered because they felt they had no future in East Germany. There was no freedom, no choice in the shops, salaries were low and they could not travel except to Eastern Europe. They wanted to go to the prosperous and free West Germany but had not obtained passports, so they hoped that by travelling through Hungary, the freest country of the Soviet Block, they could cross the Iron Curtain into Austria and then on into West Germany.
For them twenty years ago Hungary was the East-West Passage.
Credits
East-West Passage - 52 min, HD, ©2009
Director/Producer: Gábor Zsigmond Papp
Camera: Zoltán Lovasi
Editor: Bence Bartos
Reporter: Katalin Hegyes
Reporter 2: Ágnes Paul
Music: Szabolcs Molnár
Sound: Attila Bánk, Csongor Fazekas
Consultant: Tamási Miklós
Producing company: Bologna Film
Cast: Németh Miklós, Kozma Imre, Kovács László, Alexander Arnot, Gerd Vehres, Oplatka András, Bella Árpád, Alexander Lichtenberg, Christoph és Gabi Reichart, Wolf és Margarete Kanis
Festival screenings:
- Hungarian Film Festival (Budapest - H)
- Check the Gate Festival (London - UK)
Broadcasted on:
- Duna Tv (November 2009)
