Csillagok háborúja: A Birodalom visszavág—Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
 
One of the differences between the first, “good” Star Wars trilogy and the second, “bad” trilogy is that the Cold War was happening when the first three movies came out. OK, it would be a stretch to argue that the Cold War with its more limited international audiences had an influence on how these movies turned out, but the fact remains that in the mid-1970s George Lucas was primarily addressing American audiences first and foremost; given the massive cult that has arisen around the franchise, when Lucas returned to telling the story of the ragtag band of space rebels in the 1990s, it was reasonable enough for him to suppose that he would be addressing all of humankind.

By the time the third movie, Return of the Jedi, came out, it was 1983, and the Cold War officially had six more years to go. The term “Soviet bloc” perhaps disguises the extent to which the various East European countries had differing levels of autonomy vis-à-vis relations with the West. After the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the country came under the control of the Soviet loyalist János Kádár, but even so, willful Hungary developed its own distinctive brand of “goulash communism” and always remained considerably less repressive than the USSR or East Germany overall.

The release dates of the three movies are an indication of how different things were then. All three movies came out in May in the United States—the first and third movies actually came out on my own 7th birthday (May 25, 1977) and 13th birthday (1983), respectively—Empire was released on May 17, 1980. Star Wars: A New Hope came out in Hungary in August of 1979, fully two years and a few months after its U.S. release. The Empire Strikes Back came out in Hungary in January 1982 and Return of the Jedi in September of 1984—so by the third movie the gap had narrowed to a mere sixteen months, still far longer than it would take today, of course.

The Rembrandt, the Michelangelo—well, let’s say the Hieronymus Bosch of Hungarian Star Wars posters is clearly one Tibor Helényi, who was also a respected painter in Hungary.

My favorite aspect of Helényi’s posters are his inclination to insert big scary lizard creatures who find no correlative in the movies—plus pretty much none of the famous characters are represented, with the obvious exception of Darth Vader, who gets the most play by far (you would think that this might be true of the U.S. posters too, but it’s really not).

Also, I don’t know if Helényi borrowed or invented that nifty notched font, but I really like it. Typographers, can we get that one into regular rotation?
 

Csillagok háborúja: Új remény—Star Wars: A New Hope
 

Csillagok háborúja: A jedi visszatér—Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
 
Oh yeah, here’s another Hungarian poster for Star Wars: A New Hope by an András Felvidéki, which is completely strange in a very different way.
 

 
via io9

From the Dangerous Minds archives:

One of the most influential bands ever to come out of the Eastern Bloc, Hungary’s legendary Omega have been at it since 1962, the same year the Rolling Stones first got together. Give or take a couple of early members departing and a period of inactivity during 1987-1994, they are one of the longest-running acts in rock history and with one of the most stable line-ups.

Omega’s sound has obviously changed over their five decades, travelling light years from their early Beatles-influenced pop songs towards something kinda like early Status Quo fuzz box guitar meets the Moody Blues classical rock (or sometimes like a Slavic version of schlager), then a prog rock sound in the 70s that gave way to harder rocking wail (and even disco) by later in that decade. The 1980s saw them develop a spacerock thing that continues to be their signature sound.

Since Omega recorded songs in both magyar and in English, and regularly toured in England and Germany (The Scorpions are known to be big fans) they are one of the most popular groups to originate from the Communist bloc.
 

 
In any case, it’s more Omega’s early material that I like the best, so that’s what I’m going to post here. I hadn’t thought about this band in years until one of our readers, Kjirsten Winters, reminded me of them. I was shocked by how many amazing vintage clips of this band exist. Feast your eyes and ears on Omega…

Start with the mind-bending “Tékozló fiúk” (“Prodigal Sons”) from 1969. Play it LOUD!
 

 
More Omega after the jump

 
Spanish photographer Palíndromo Mészáros shot a series of stunning photographs depicting the harsh effect that a 2010 toxic waste spill in West Hungary had on the environment and surrounding landscape.

It’s hard to believe that the bottom part of that image isn’t photoshopped. This is NOT an earlier photograph being contrasted with a post spill shot of the same area, this shows the actual line of demarcation of the devastating (and massive) toxic aluminum spill!

Click here to see larger version.
 

 
See the rest of Mészáros’ series at America Photo.

Via High Definite

 
If you’ve ever wondered what’s involved in being a spy, then take a look at Gábor Zsigmond Papp’s documentary The Life of an Agent, which showcases a selection of hush-hush training films made by the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior for their secret police from the fifties to the eighties. 

As Alessandro Cima points out over at his site Candlelight Stories:

This is a 2004 film compilation by Gábor Zsigmond Papp that presents a ‘best of’ series of clips from thirty years of Hungarian secret police training films geared toward protecting the socialist regime. Subjects covered include: how to place a bug, how to film people from handbag cameras, how to follow someone, how to secretly search a home, how to recruit agents, and how to effectively network for information gathering.

Amongst all this, the film also reveals that there were over 20,000 agents in Hungary, who spied directly on 70,000 people, and took an interest in a further 30,000, which added up to roughly over 1% of the country’s population. And let’s not forget another 100,000 everyday Joes who grassed up their neighbors, on a regular basis.

It may look fun and games now, but these films reveal the seriousness with which both sides enforced state security during the Cold War. And let’s not forget it was both sides, as pointed out by MI5’s counter-intelligence spy, Peter Wright in his memoir Spy-Catcher, where he fessed up to bugging and burgling his way across London in the name of Queen and Country.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The true story behind ‘The Mackintosh Man’

 
Via Candlelight Stories