Our trip to Transylvania, 1980
“In 1980, we prepared for our usual summer trip to Transylvania. After the hardships of crossing the Hungarian-Romanian border, we got into it with usual excitement. We have already felt completely at home in Maros County. I found the Romanian world a bit strange, but I absorbed the beauty, humanity and love of Hungarian settlements and landscapes.
It was the first year we had captured the road with my dad’s new Super8 camera. In the mid-70s we already made a normal 8 film about a family trip, but that wasn’t with our own camera.
Much to my delight, I too was able to shoot with the camera, as much as I wanted. In the film, we move deeper and further into Transylvania. First you can see Csucsa along the Körös, the former castle of Ady, and at the end the Békás gorge. Meanwhile, in Târgu Mureş we see relatives from my mother’s family, landscapes from Gheorgheni, in Korond my father with folk potter József Áron Mónus, and Farkaslaka with my father idling on the porch of the Áron Tamási memorial house with Gáspár Tamási, little brother to Áron Tamási. We can see Csíksomlyó, the fortified churches of Gyergyó, Mádéfalva, Gyergyószentmiklós and the famous Halmágyi couple of Gyimesközéplok: primate Mihály Halmágyi and his wife, the gardonist Gizella Ádám. This journey has been a defining experience of my life, and the beauty of filming. ”