Documentary film, 97 min, DV (2006)

Pacal emerged at the intersection of film and video art. I had long been interested in video as a medium, while at the same time working in the film industry, where I encountered an entirely different cinematic language in both scale and way of thinking. I sensed a significant distance between these two worlds — culturally, technically, and conceptually — and became particularly interested in how they might be brought closer together. Pacal became an experiment in this direction: moving between documentary, video art, and feature film, its slow, meditative rhythm was inspired by the process of cooking tripe itself. Just as tripe stew is known less for its taste than for its long preparation — sometimes taking up to ten hours — the film is also less concerned with narrative than with waiting, repetition, and the experience that gradually emerges from them. Together with Béla Vidéki, we carried out every stage of the work ourselves, and it was important to us that the film should not exist only within traditional cinema spaces, but also reach audiences directly through the internet — something that was highly unusual in Hungary at the time.