Writer, film historian Nemeskurty dies

Budapest, October 9 (MTI) – Author, film and literary historian Istvan Nemeskurty has died, at the age of 90, the family told MTI on Friday.

Born in 1925, he first published his writings in the Vigilia Catholic journal in 1947. He later worked for Magveto Publishing House and Hungarian film company Mafilm. He then was director of the Hungarian Film Institute from 1984 until his retirement.

Nemeskurty was involved in filmmaking for almost 30 decades, which period produced 160 Hungarian feature-length films and launched 30 fresh directors.

Between 1993-1995 he served as president of the Hungarian Writers’ Chamber. He was recipient of the highest state Kossuth and Szechenyi Awards.

Janos Ader, Hungary’s president, said Nemeskurty was an exceptional personality, one of the few who received the entire nation’s attention whenever he rose to speak. “As a patient teacher, he taught us to remember our past, to learn the history that lives within us and to respect the great figures of Hungarian history”, Ader said.

Referring to Nemeskurty, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that he had created an ideological foundation on which a broad alliance was built later. Hungary would not have the political culture, national assembly or government in which civic, national and Christian forces form a majority for which Istvan Nemeskurty had done so much. He was “an inexorable soldier, a teacher and a scientist in one,” he said during a press conference in Kaposvar.