Streams channeled into concrete basins, logistics systems, warehouse bases, parade grounds, high-voltage lines, outdated thermal centers, abandoned factories and piles of by-products of former industrial production make up most of Budapest. The Belt is a slow film in which we leave the familiar sight of the city on Kőbányai street, take a look at the new stadiums, the director’s station of Ferencváros, and the gigantic real estate development on the site of the former slaughterhouse. We travel through a dense fabric of turnstiles, railway overpasses and wires. The film gives us the opportunity to meditate on the relationship between ourselves, the city and the natural environment during a slow, drifting journey.
The film is a silent film, to which Gergő Pápai and Szabolcs Füge will play background music, just like the musicians who were sitting under the screen in the era of silent films. This time, they are looking for sounds suitable for the film in the borderland of drone ambient, bleeptechno, noise and post-rock.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Gergő Pápai studied documentary filmmaking at the Department of Cultural and Visual Anthropology at the University of Miskolc. His work focuses on human rights and environmental issues. The Belt is part of a film and music project that has been in the making for almost three years, in which he analyses the intersection of the built environment and nature in various experimental formats.