THE HUNGARIAN VACUUM
A poetry film

Four talking heads. Three Hungarians. One vacuum cleaner.

They are poets, they are miserable, and they are cut off from the world. United by sardonic pride, they come together to represent their country and wage war on the dust bunnies of the mind in this poetic deepdive. A daring poetry film, The Hungarian Vacuum is part gripping mystery, part arthouse project, part literary podcast, part poetry reading, and part utter failure. You will have questions, but you’re not likely to get any answers.

Supported by Hungarian Cultural Centre, London. A film by Steven J Fowler. Starring Kornelia Deres, Kinga Toth, Peter Zavada. Music by Benedict Taylor. Edited by Botond Bartha.

A film as part of the European Poetry Festival Digital program. With no physical events in 2020, EPF digital reveals what can be created without proximity, generating new insights into poetic practice in continental Europe and creating ambitious film-poetry collaborations especially for this two week e-fest.

Kinga Toth (b.1983) writes and publishes short stories, poems and drama pieces in Hungarian, German and English languages. She is a musician, extensive vocalist, visual and sound-poet, presents her work in performances, exhibitions and installations international. 2019/2020 she won the Hugo Ball Förderpreis for her intermedia art and literary work and 2020 she won the Bernard Heidsieck Price in Centre Pompidou for her literature-media-performance work. Web: www.kingatoth.com

Peter Závada is a poet and playwright from Budapest, Hungary. He was born in 1982 in Budapest, and has been publishing poems since 2009, in such Hungarian literary journals as Jelenkor, Élet és Irodalom and Alföld. His first collection of poems, Ahol Megszakad, was published by Libri in Budapest in 2012, followed by Mész in 2015, and Roncs szélárnyékban in 2017. His plays have been performed in the Katona József, Örkény, Radnóti, Víg, Belvárosi and Trafó theatres in Budapest, as well as in Nyitra, Slovakia and Dresden, Germany.

Kornélia Deres (1987) is a Hungarian poet, writer, theatre and performance studies scholar. She is a lecturer at ELTE University Budapest, and in 2020 a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Cologne. She spent three years as assistant professor at Károli University between 2015-18. Her first poetry volume, Szőrapa [Terrycloth Father] was published by JAK, association for emerging Hungarian writers. It was awarded with the best poetry debut prize in 2012. Her second poetry volume, Bábhasadás [Crack of the Puppet] was published in 2017 by Jelenkor Publishing House. Besides this, she is author of one monograph on theatre and intermediality (2016), and one children’s book (2018). Her third poetry volume, Box is forthcoming in 2022.