Master class with György Pálfi

Final Cut
The individual and the collective – senses and emotions on screen in the mirror of the collage-like film Final Cut. How do collective human experiences change into individually experienced emotions? What is it that makes hundreds of assembled film clippings function as one story? How do we employ our senses to influence our emotions so that only one detail becomes more difficult – identification with the characters? These are the questions to which director György Pálfi will be finding practical answers.

György Pálfi

The Hungarian director György Pálfi made his debut with his feature film Hukkle (2002), for which he won the European Discovery of the Year Award. However, his short films started attracting attention already during his time of direction studies at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest. His next feature film Taxidermia, which he co-wrote with his wife Zsófia Ruttkay, was first screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Its worldwide recognition and the large number of awards it has won can be attributed to connecting Pálfi’s unique feel for opulent visuals with bizarre motifs and messages relevant for the present. His third feature film balances on the edge of a documentary and an actors’ film. His I Am Not Your Friend from 2009 is an episodic film with a choice cast of non-actors. In 2012 Pálfi assembled yet another feature film by using bits of five hundred different cult classics of cinematography. The film`s well-fitting title is Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen. His most recent feature film Free Fall appeared in 2014. Apart from cinema pieces, György Pálfi produces various TV films and series and works as a pedagogue.