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MAY 4-JUNE 15
This series opens with Istvan Szabo’s Mephisto (May 4, 2:30 p.m.), a study of Nazi-era corruption that’s probably the best-known Hungarian film of the last 20 years. After that, the retrospective ranges widely through films little seen in this country, from a 1919 short by director Mihaly Kertesz (Michael Curtiz after he moved to Hollywood), My Brother is Coming (May 12, 6 p.m.) to the Washington premiere of Magic Hunter (pictured, May 5, 6 p.m.), a 1994 dual narrative based on the old European legend of a hunter who acquires magic bullets from the devil. Among other highlights are People of the Mountains (May 18, 2:30 p.m.), a pioneering work of neorealism; A Sunday Romance (May 25, 2:30 p.m.), a “finely drawn” view of the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; The Round-Up (May 26, 6 p.m.), a savage view of totalitarianism that brought director Miklos Jancso to international attention; and The Witness (June 2, 6 p.m.), a 1968 satire of Communist bureaucracy that was banned after the Soviet crackdown in Czechoslovakia. At the National Gallery of Art’s East Building Auditorium, 4th & Constitution NW. FREE. (202) 737-4215. (Mark Jenkins)