Portraits of Living
Based on the short stories of Hungarian writer, István Örkény, Portraits of Living is a grotesque look at 4 different moments of life. It is a period piece that aims to show situations where humanity is found in grotesque situations as well as to show the absurd in reality.
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Marcell Benjamin CsillagDirector
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Marcell Benjamin CsillagWriter
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Marcell Benjamin CsillagProducer
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Marcell Benjamin CsillagCinematography
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Alexander ScrivensKey Cast"George, Mr. Lipschitz, Prof. KHG"
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Emma ZadowKey Cast"Kate, Mother"
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Eva TownsendKey Cast"Daughter"
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Sam TerryKey Cast"Dr Kester, Intruder"
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Tom AlbanKey Cast"SS guard"
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William FergussonComposer
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János BrecklCostumeKontroll, Aranyélet
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Ágnes PleskonicsCostume
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Hannah LeesAssistant director
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Conor RamskillAssistant director
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Dávid BodrogiAssistant Camera
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Jonathan FoulstonSound recordist
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Harriet Crisfield-MagillSound recordist
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James SarsonVFX supervisor and compositor
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Eliz Cruz3 Modelling
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Liam GoughColourist
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Project Type:Short, Student
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Genres:Drama, Dark Comedy, Grotesque, student
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Runtime:8 minutes 2 seconds
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Completion Date:July 7, 2018
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Production Budget:600 GBP
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Country of Origin:United Kingdom
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Country of Filming:United Kingdom
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:2:35
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:Yes
Marcell was born in Budapest in 1996. He got in touch with filmmaking fairly soon through his father, who is a documentary filmmaker. Marcell was 12 when he made an edit of his own of his father's feature lenght documentary. At this point, he fell in love with storytelling and went on to study Film Production at Norwich University of the Arts. He discovered his passion for photography and cinematography during his time at the university. After finishing his graduation film, Portraits of Living, he moved back to Budapest to start climbing the ladder of the camera department as well as working on short form narrative and documentary projects as cinematographer.
Portraits of Living is an adaptation of István Örkény's one-minute stories (well, 4 and a half of them). I've been wanting to adapt his work ever since I layed my eyes on filmmaking. The main reason for that is the author’s extraordinary talent to touch on the emotion of humanity in his stories from a grotesque point of view. When picking the stories to tell in 8 minutes, I aimed to select them so that I can show the reality in grotesque situations as well as the grotesque in reality. Most importantly, whether I had to write a completely new dialogue or just visualise something that had already been written, I wanted to stay true to the writer's vision and make the audience feel what I felt after reading these stories. I never aimed for more than putting these moments of life on screen with nothing more than observing them with my camera and let the audience draw their conclusions.