BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - Karoly Makk, one of Hungary’s greatest film directors whose “Cats’ Play” was nominated for an Oscar in 1975, has died. He was 91.
The Szechenyi Academy of Letters and Arts said Makk, who had been its president since 2011, died Wednesday. It didn’t give a cause of death.
Makk’s film “Love,” one of the best films about the aftermath of the failed 1956 anti-Soviet uprising and life under tyranny, won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971. Between 1955 and 1987, six of his films, including “Liliomfi,” ’’Another Way” and “The Last Manuscript,” were nominated for the top Palme d’Or award at Cannes.
Makk was successful in many genres, including comedies and dramas. In a 2015 interview with Hungarian magazine Magyar Narancs, he rejected criticism about lacking a personal style.
“I made all of my films, even the worst one, with me in the story with a gesture, a sentence or a look,” Makk said. “It is terribly suspicious in this profession if someone can make a comedy just as well as another genre.”
Makk often had to struggle with Hungary’s communist rulers and censors to get his films made, including the very successful “Love,” which was delayed for years. His 1982 film, “Another Way,” was initially nominated by Hungary for the Oscar but was later withdrawn on orders from Janos Kadar, Hungary’s post-1956 leader.
Makk was born on Dec. 22, 1925, in the town of Berettyoujfalu in eastern Hungary, where his parents owned a cinema, which gave Makk the chance to watch many movies. His parents, who like many Hungarians lost everything after the country came under Soviet rule, initially meant for him to become an engineer, a common profession on his mother’s side of the family.
Information about survivors wasn’t immediately available.
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