"From the Black Forest to the Black Sea" and second part "Between Flood and Frost" represents almost everything the Donauinseln blog is about. Sediment crisis due to hydroelectric power plants, life on the floodplains, the Delta, the Iron Gates, fish, game, birds, urban landscape, river history, geology, the debate on the source of the Danube, the Rhine-Danube war over the catchment area, mayflower swarming, the Wachau, etc. I must admit that not every post had been translated yet from the Hungarian Dunaiszigetek blog, but until I am finished with the remaining 200 posts please enjoy this two nature films, the essence of my two blogs.
One of the most beautiful nature film of Hungary was introduced two years ago by Zoltán Török. Wild hungary is also available in English language, and there was a teaser of it on the Donauinseln blog. The co-director and cameraman of Wild Hungary, Szabolcs Mosonyi now made his own nature film about one of Europe's largest Danubian floodplain area, the Szigetköz. This alluvium is situated in northwestern Hungary, near the Slovakian border. This film has mostly plants and animals as main characters, but humans and their effect to the enviroment could not have been ignored. The director also captured the effect of the changes in the environment of the last two decades which was caused by the Gabcíkovo hydroelectric dam. I hope you will like Wild Szigetköz as you liked Wild Hungary before. Do enjoy these two trailers, hopefully they will be narrated in English or other languages soon. The premier will take place at Uránia cinema in Budapest on the 3rd of October 7 p. m.
Good news, Zoltán Török has started the second part of Wild Hungary!
I did not know about this workshop in Kismaros, until Szilveszter Aradi sent me an e-mail that they had finished with this nature film. The Mátyásfa Environment Protection Association together with the Kisduna Newspaper made a 20 minute long film on the nature and species of the Kismaros floodpalins. The shooting started in February and lasted until May, so they have captured aspects of three seasons. I am quite happy about mentioning my name in this film, because the creators used some of my maps and aerial photographs previously published on the blog. It may help the audience knowing their way around.
The other day, someone shared this short animated film on the Danube
Islands facebook page. I watched it immediately, and in the subsequent
absolute silence I told myself that others must see this! Ada Kaleh, the
small Turkish Danubian island found its watery grave 40 years ago, when
the Iron Gate dam was built between Romania and Serbia.
The director, Sándor Reisenbüchler not only commemorates the loss of Ada Kaleh (Fortress Island in Turkish language). There were other “riverside developments” in years 1986/1987. We may recall the story of the small Transylvanian village, Bözödújfalu (Bezidou Nou). The communist regime in Romania decided to build a reservoir in its valley. They begin to relocate the Hungarian villagers in 1985. Clothes, patterns, houses and the people appearing in the animated film are a clear reference what has happened in Bözödújfalu. The church tower emerging from a lake is a symbol of this devastation.
But there is another meaning of this film. In those years the Czechoslovakian government has just began to construct another dam on the Danube at Bős (Gabcíkovo). There is a feeling, that once happened in the Iron Gates can happen again, now in the Szigetköz (Hungarian-Slovakian border) and in the Danube Bend. The Islands of Zebegény, Helemba, Fogarasi and Törpe could also disappear. Fortunately emerging waves of protest caused this plan partly abandoned when the communist regimes were collapsed in Central Europe. Perhaps because they also watched Farewell, little island then!
This film is not for the faint-hearted!
Thanks for the link, Pál Szabó! And thanks for sharing!
I may not be neutral about this nature film, made by Zoltán Török in 2011. In brief this is my favourite of it's kind. If you do not know Hungary yet, well, this is the best way to start!
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