BuSho, Budapest’s International Short Film Festival

With the worst of summer’s dog days behind us (and we are not talking about Budapest’s hosting of the International Dog Fair, but rather the easing of the long hot days’ heat) we can ready ourselves for a busy autumn. That means it’s almost September, the time of year for BuSho, the Budapest International Short Film Festival. But what is behind this strange name? In the words of the organizers, “The name “BuSho” comese from a pun (Budapest Short – budapesti rövid), but it also refers to a traditional popular custom of winter-send-off from southern Hungary called ‘busójárás’ ”

In its ninth year, the festival has seen an expansion, and was able to draw 962 submissions from 67 countries, ranging from San Marino to Iran, Kazakhstan to Canada. Only 90 films – in categories of ‘fiction,’ ‘experimental,’ and ‘animated’ will be screened over this year’s six-day festival. Films selected for competition come from places like Moldova and South Korea, with a health number of locally made, Hungarian short films in the running. Started in 2004 by local film-makers, BuSho is intended to showcase and give an audience to short films, which are frequently overlooked or difficult to market. The form is, of course, also a great way for budding film-makers to get their ideas out there without having to fund a feature-length film and is an important part of any film culture’s development.  Since its inception, BuSho has since outgrown its confines and is also having satellite screenings in towns around Hungary, including the Szolnok, Szombathely, Nagyvárad (present-day Romania), and  Magyarkanizsa (present-day Serbia).

Just to get a flavor for what you might expect of a BuSho short film, have a look here at Cabbagemincer, a short by Russian Vadim Vinar, which won for Best Production Design last year. It’s showing on Vimeo, exactly here.

For a breakdown of the schedule for this year’s BuSho, Budapest International Film Festival, have a look here.

Otherwise, thanks for reading this short plug for BuSho, our short festival.

PPM Film Services is a Budapest-based film company offering an inspiring and creative work atmosphere for its host of clients from around the world. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we’re charged to create, we do it with no compromise. To sign up for the PPM Hungary newsletter, have a look here.

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Brew-da-pest! Craft Beers in Budapest

Budapest is in the throes of a revolution. No, you will not see marching in the streets. This is a quieter, more flavorful revolution.  It’s fair to say that everybody of legal drinking age, both left and right leaning, rich and poor, supports the revolution in craft-beer brewing that is occurring in Budapest and around Hungary.

Though a bit behind the international trend in brewing craft- and micro-brews, Hungary is catching up, and doing so with style and taste. A new Hungarian craft brewing company seems to appear every week, as do the all micro-brew bars that sell their products. The trend in Hungarian micro-brew beer appears to have started in Miskolc with the Serforrás Brewery, which was one of the first small-size breweries to began experimenting with pale ales, pilsners, and lagers, which they sold from their own pub and at local restaurants. More recently they have broken new ground in concocting the first ever Tokaj Aszű-infused beer. Having tasted this sweet desert-wine flavored beer, we can say that it is almost too much of a good thing.

The next major step in the craft beer invasion was the inclusion of locally made beer Keserű Méz (Bitter Honey) at Budapest’s most popular beer garden, Szimpla Kert. The micro-brew bar/store Csak a Jó Söroök (Only Good Beers) forwarded the charge by selling recently introduced Hungarian micro-brews alongside the best international beers, and has proved so popular a bar that they have taken over the space next door to them, proving that there is a local and international thirst for beers that are more expensive but more daring than those produced by the handful of large multinational beer breweries.

In just the last few years, the market has exploded with Hungarian craft beers of all sorts. You can find Hungarian IPA’s, double IPA’s, porters, stouts, red ales, beers infused with elderberry, blueberry, plum, and apple; bocks, double bocks, wheat beers and more routine lagers and pilsners; all brewed locally. We’d list more but we are getting thirsty. It’s time to join the revolution, if they will only let us find space at the bar.

PPM Film Services is a Budapest-based film company offering an inspiring and creative work atmosphere for its host of clients from around the world. Since our inception, our focus has been providing the best of the best in terms of local production resources, locations, cast and technical teams to ensure that whatever the production we’re charged to create, we do it with no compromise. To sign up for the PPM Hungary newsletter, have a look here.

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