Author: Bijan Tehrani

During the six year duration of World War II, as the German armies caused havoc throughout Europe and, indeed, the world, there was only one city that stood up in an uprising against the occupiers. That city was Warsaw, Poland which fought off the German armies for two months in Aug/Sept. of 1944. The Poles sent out a camera crew to document the epoch struggle. Over eight hours of footage, all silent, was collected and found throughout Europe in the years following the War. To honor the military and civilians that fought and died that summer (it is estimated that…

Barcas Untold Legends directed by Tibor Kocsis is one of the films participating in Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles 2014. FC Barcelona is the world’s most popular and most successful soccer club with tens of millions of fans. 1956 changed the history of Hungarian soccer forever. Puskas went to Real Madrid, the left winger Zoltan Czibor and the Gold Team striker Sandor Kocsis, contracted to Barcelona, they also played a key role in the film, presented in Barcelona as Hungarian heroes. The “rags-legged” Czibor, called as “crazy bird” quickly became a favorite of the Spanish crowd. László Kubala, in…

Coming Out directed by Dénes Orosz is one of the films participating in Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles 2014. What do you do when you find you’re not the man you thought you were? This is the story of Hungary’s most famous gay celebrity who openly admits his homosexuality and fights for gay rights in a society where so many alternative values are denied. But then something happens and he is shocked to discover his growing interest in the female of the species. Coming Out is a daring romantic comedy that examines the question of otherness in a unique…

Heavenly Shift directed by Márk Bodzsár is one of the films participating in Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles 2014. Death does not select, man does. – Set in Budapest, Heavenly Shift offers an eerie insight into the everyday lives of a rather extraordinary ambulance crew. The film’s main character is Milan, a young refugee from the Balkan War, who joins a team of paramedics but inadvertently ends up involved in the funeral business in order to finance his fiancée’s rescue from the hostilities. MILÁN (András Ötvös) the half Serbian, half Hungarian guy deserts from the Croatian army in 1992,…

14th edition of Hungarian Film Festival, LA will run from November 14 to November 20 in Los Angeles. In order to learn about 2014 festival screenings and events we interviewed Bela Bunyik Founder and Director of the Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles Bijan Tehrani: Please tell us about the growth of Hungarian Film Festival, Los Angeles over the last 14 years.Bela Bunyik: We brought to the United States Robert Koltai’s film We never die. The success of this film which included an HBO acquisition and sell out houses at the Laemmle Theater (the venue for most of the Foreign…

AFI FEST 2014 will run from November 6 to November 13. As in years passed, we had the opportunity to interview Jacqueline Lyanga, Festival Director, the American Film Institute’s (AFI) annual film festival in Los Angeles.For Jacqueline Lyanga, it’s a position that she has held since 2010, but she has worked for AFI since 2005 as a programmer and producer of year-round and festival programs. Ms. Lyanga travels all over the world to most of the major international film festivals and markets to find films to showcase to AFI FEST’s Los Angeles audience. Prior to working for AFI FEST, Jacqueline…

AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda is an unconventional biography about an Indian Swami who brought yoga and meditation to the West in the 1920s. This feature documentary explores the life and teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, who authored the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, which has sold millions of copies worldwide and is a go-to book for seekers, philosophers and yoga enthusiasts today. It was the only book that Steve Jobs had on his iPad, and he arranged to give away 800 copies of it to the dignitaries who attended his memorial service. It was also a point of entry…

To review the finding out about the success of 2014 Polish Film Festival, Los Angeles we had an interview with Vladek Juszkiewicz, director of the festival.Bijan Tehrani: Looking back at the 2014 Los Angeles Polish Film Festival, how happy are you with the outcome?Vladek Juszkiewicz: As the organizer of the Festival, I will never be fully satisfied with the outcome. Attendance was very good, but I would like it to be better. People like the program, but there were some films missing. For example, I could not get this year films about the Warsaw Uprising which happened 70 years ago.…

Strong Coffee Isn’t That Bad winner of Cinema Without Borders award for the Best Short Film at Polish Film Festival, LA, is about relationship between a father and a son. In this comedy-drama, the son comes back home after 18years abroad. Now you have two men that are too stubborn to admit their true feelings for each other. Alek Pietrzak director and writer of Strong Coffee was born in 1992 in Plock, Poland. Alek first graduated from the Music School in piano class. Then he studied at the Warsaw Film School and worked as volunteer at the Camerimage International Film…

LIFE FEELS GOOD is about the life story of Mateusz that has cerebral palsy. In addition to his obvious physical handicap, he was diagnosed at a very early age as a mentally disabled person with no communicative ability. After twenty five years, however, it turned out that apart from his physical problems, he was a perfectly normal, even quite intelligent person. The film is a chronicle of his life. We get to know Mateusz now, when he is 30 and is institutionalized at a clinic for the mentally disabled. He is about to be examined by a committee which will…