East Punk Memories – A Rather Personal Film Review
Originally published in the 36th issue of "The CEU Weekly". L ucile Chaufour visited Hungary during the 1980s, when it was still a so-to-say “soft dictatorship” behind the Iron Curtain. She formed friendships with the young punks of Budapest, and not only attended their concerts but also recorded them (illegally) with a Super 8 camera. Besides the music of punk bands she got acquainted with the life of youth in a struggling Communist regime, where several teenagers rebelled against their parents’ generation not only because they were young, but because they held the system built and tolerated by older generations as unbearable. As Chafour’s film and its characters argue , punk had a different meaning behind the Iron Curtain than in the West, it was not about following a fashion trend. Some characters admit, that in the 80s they did not even necessarily have a clear idea what the punk movement meant in Western Europe. Of course Hungarian punks differed a lot among each