8th December, screening eve
‘Do you want the good news or the bad news,’ Cam says, glancing up from his laptop. He’s been creating Italian subtitles all day, or at least has been asking Google to — our theory being that Google has never been better at Italian than it is right now, and if the Palermo audience didn’t laugh in the funny bits of our film, they might at least laugh at the translations.
‘Good news,’ I choose. This close to the screening, I’m really keen on good news and neutral news.
‘We can pick up the flyers from a print shop that’s only a five minute walk from here,’ Cam says.
‘But didn’t you pick them up at Officeworks before we left?’
‘Um … yes.’
Cam tells me with his eyes that our flyers are on a kitchen bench in North Melbourne, and then, because I don’t speak Eyes, he tells me again with his voice.
‘They’re on a kitchen bench in North Melbourne. So are the press kits.’
In the scheme of bad newses, it’s not too bad. Maybe not even worthy of the good news bad news construction. ‘We can go past the print shop tomorrow morning and collect on the way to the cinema,’ Cam says.
In the hellos at dinner, I say György with a soft G, and Cam has a go with a hard G, and we must have both made a fair mess of it because he tells us to call him George. He’s György Szöllősi, journalist and author, head of the Puskas Institute, Puskas biographer and government appointee to the grandiosely titled Ambassador of the Hungarian Football Tradition.
He’s in our film, we interviewed him in 2018 when Cam and I visited Budapest to capture Puskas landmarks, and he arrives at the restaurant with two neatly wrapped gifts.
‘Well done on getting it finished’ he says. ‘The Australian part of the Puskas story is not well known, especially here in Europe. We’re sorry the Foundation has not been able to be more help’.
It’s true that I’ve asked the Hungarians to solve our financial woes on many occasions, and it’s Australians who have made paying for the film possible. I take off the wrapping and it’s a watch, a Puskas watch with his famous number 10 at the top of the hour.
It’s a lovely gesture, and we say our thanks. I also think of my Grade 3 teacher, Mr McAuliffe and an April Fools prank he played in 1982, telling our whole class ‘you can throw away your watches, time has gone decimal. Ten hours in the day. One hundred minutes in the hour.’
We spent the entire morning translating clock time as we had only recently learned it into the new decimal format, which was a struggle for ten year olds uncomfortable transposing twelfhs into tenths. Kids cried. You’ve got to hand it to Mr McAuliffe. Little Samantha asked about the future of her new Mickey Mouse watch and he told her she might as well throw it away. ‘As good as useless’ he said. He didn’t budge until noon.
Mr McAuliffe would have loved my number 10 Puskas watch.
9th December, screening day
‘Tony, tell us why you made the film,’ asks the interviewer and MC.
I embark upon an answer that I hope is eloquent and passionate. I wave my hands like a proper Italian, projecting into the back rows, and tells stories about Puskas, Melbourne, South Melbourne, football, the NSL, sports documentaries, Palermo, Gyorgy and last night’s dinner.
I glance at Cam and my interviewer and I can see both are a little agitated. Cam is making ‘shorten’ motions with his hands, and saying the same with his eyes but remember I don’t speak Eyes. The translator jumps in before I can give the result of a Marconi-Hellas home and away game in 1991.
‘That’s going to be a lot to translate.’
Shit, I forgot. The audience can’t understand me. The translator accepts the conch and fixes it all, at least I assume she does because we’re applauded warmly and the curtain rises on our European premiere.
For much of the screening, I have half an eye on Gyorgy. He’s written the books, made the Hungarian documentaries, spent half his life at the altar of Puskas. He’s not a demonstrative man, and that’s reflected in the way he watches films, but he laughs out loud a few times and I think I detect a tear during the whole of life montage, played against the Hungarian folk song ‘Repulj Madar,Repulj’ (Fly, bird, fly’) which was sung by Hope Csutoros from My Friend the Chocolate Cake. (David Bridie composed most of the film’s music)
At the end of the credits, Gyorgy is called onto stage and he mentions the emotional power of both the film and the closing credits song. He congratulates us on the documentary, says a lot of nice things publicly that he mentioned privately the night before. He also says that he hopes the film will show in Hungary in the next few months.
Our session gives way to the fast edited ‘Tire War 2’ set in the world of Russian Drift Racing, and we give it a go for a while, but it’s in Russian with Italian subtitles and so reasonably tough going. The one after that is more to my taste, ‘The Lost Merckx’, a doco about how an important personal bicycle from the world's greatest ever cyclist, Eddy Merckx, ended up living in the attic of an old bicycle shop. We will become friends with its director, Richard Hoddinott, as well as many other directors and producers of the more than 80 sports films at the 44th Paladino d’Oro. That will be the fun of the next week. Watching sports films, meeting the creators and hanging out in Sicily.
Screenings Update:
it now looks like ‘Ange & The Boss will have a Budapest premiere, and a run at the Pápa International Historical Film Festival in the last week of April. The Australian cinema season will begin at the Cinema Nova on 14th March, Classic on 15th Match and Lido 16th March. Our cinema run will include these cinemas, plus Thornbury Picture House in Melbourne, and we are working on other cinemas and Q and A screenings interstate. Get in touch if you have independent cinema leads!
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