At the very beginning of your book, you write that the making of found footage films begins on the streets – at flea markets and antique shops – with the search for roll films. This might be a "chicken or the egg" type of question, but which one do you find first; the subject you would like to explore or the material you would like to work with?

In my case, there are two types of processes. At times, I chance upon the material; for example, once a dear friend of mine from the Film Archive of the National Film Institute Hungary called me about a discarded grocery store advertisement from the 80s. I didn't know what I was going to do with it, I just felt that it could be good material and eventually I used it in my film Nutrition Fuge (2018). A similar thing happened in the case of another work of mine, Light-sleep (2009). I walked down Dohány Street, stepped into the first antique store and asked the manager whether he had any Super 8 mm films, then he asked back if porn tapes would be suitable. Sometimes the materials I find, primarily Hollywood films, evoke a strong emotional reaction in me that leads to a new film idea. I once came across the 35 mm copy of A Nightmare on Elm Street in a Facebook group selling roll films. I immediately bought it and created The Philosophy of Horror (2019) with the help of director Bori Máté. However, another film of ours The Rub (2018) or my latest The Grey Machine (2024) – the latter will be screened in October at ISBN+ – were born from ideas totally independent of material. This is a completely different process; films that are born from a specific material usually exist in physical form as well, but the films that begin with the idea are often created digitally, since these sources are easy to obtain.

Whether we're talking about film stocks or digital files, this type of filmmaking is highly dependent on the process of collecting. Do you collect films continuously or do you only look for material during the development phase?

There is a continuous accumulation of films. I’m already known in celluloid-fetishist circles, so occasionally someone calls me asking if I need, for instance, five boxes of old advertisements. The rolls of commercials or old movie trailers are stored in warehouses; they are no longer shown anywhere, no one needs them but unlike movies, they don’t have royalties on them, so their nature is quite obscure legally.

Where do you store the films you collect?

By testing the limits of my wife's, Bori’s patience, I partly store them in the built-in wardrobes of our apartment. However, I take most of my material to my workshop at my parents' construction company. There, I can pack films and work comfortably, since my process requires a lot of space. I often use spray paint, bleach, and I even bury the films in the ground for a certain amount of time.

Do you only use a film once or do you go back to a certain roll to remix it, to use it in another context?

It always felt like "cheating" to reuse them. I get bored of things very quickly; I rarely work on films for more than a year and a half, and I usually don't want to deal with them again. But I've already digitied tens of thousands of painted frames, and it's tempting that they're at arm’s length, stored on Winchesters. Those I use from time to time, especially the ones that appear more abstract. For example, behind the digital images of my Agatha Christie-adaptation, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (2022), there is an abstract, cloud-esque background, which I created by recycling images from The Rub.

When you work on a film stock, do you already have an idea on how the digital result will look like?

In every phase of the process, I experience an element of surprise. First, when I take the material out of the ground to paint and bleach it; then during the digitalization, when I get to see the pictures up close; then when I look at the digitized image on a monitor; and finally, when creating the moving picture. I've been experimenting with the enhancement of this game in The Grey Machine. I downloaded glitch and data moshing applications to my phone which help me further destroy the images. I used them to record the pictures that appeared on the monitor, and then I also recorded the video appearing on my phone screen. My friend and director, Gyula Nemes calls this method "meatball filmmaking". It can produce a very exciting result, as the image "evaporates" – the pictures have no contours left, they lose their video effect and start to resemble impressionist paintings.

Although you typically work with fictional films, in two of your projects Rimbaud (2014) and Polaroids (2015) everyday photographs appear. What attracted you to banal imaging?

Fictional films are public property, and they are part of our collective unconscious; everyone recognizes frames from Star Wars, for instance. What is striking about private photographs is that they are ambivalent. On the one hand, all private films can be classified into genres such as vacation, birthday or wedding; on the other hand, they record unrepeatable, one-off moments. Even back in the 60s, Super 8 mm films were relatively cheap, however, people didn't take out their cameras every five minutes to record something. Hence there is a sense of uniqueness in the moments they captured; that’s what excites me. I don’t focus on the stories behind these photos; in this sense, I am much less faithful to the source material than, let’s say, Péter Forgács who prefers to unfold family histories in his films as a quasi-anthropologist. I’m interested in the new quality that comes to life when I take a snapshot from its original context and put it in another. In my pseudo-documentary Rimbaud, I meditated on the later life of the poet; and in Polaroids, I adapted the poems of Márton Simon. I often feel the desire to create a feature-length film using only private photographs - after all, I have a huge collection to work with.

Regarding remixed documents, the question of copyright – and in the case of private recordings, personal rights – arises. How much of a challenge does the domestic or international legal environment mean for a director of found footage films? Have you ever run into problems with your own films?

The legal landscape around found footage films is very foggy. In the past ten years, it has become an important topic of discussion as more and more of these films are being created. In 2019, when we started working with producer Dóra Nedeczky, who considers it very important to keep the process as clear as possible, I also started looking into the situation. There is a Spanish art journal called Found Footage Magazine that published a study on the topic of copyright. They didn’t mention the use of everyday photographs, since in these cases, we can only talk about personal rights, which is really complicated. Let's say, you want to use a photo of someone that you found at a flea market; how are you supposed to ask for a license of use when you don't know the original owner of the photo, nor the person depicted on it? The case of fictional films is simpler, and at the same time, more complicated. It's easier because copyright always belongs to someone; after 75 years it automatically expires, and the film becomes public domain. Of course there can be errors in the system; for example, Night of the Living Dead (1968) by George A. Romero is no longer protected by copyright. However, there is a more nebulous side of copyright that affects me, since I don’t use public domain films. This is where the concept of artistic appropriation comes into play meaning that by transforming the original pictures as part of my creative process, they become my property. For instance, the painted frames of A Nightmare on Elm Street are my property copyright-wise. However, there is also a problem with profit-making; the rights to the films I use usually belong to Hollywood film studios, who don’t shy away from going to court if someone makes money by appropriating their films. The legal grey zone of not-for-profit orientated artistic creation provides protection against potential copyright claims. However, a lot of found footage movies are shown in cinemas; for instance, the latest film of the Australian director duo Soda Jerk - who typically makes collages from Hollywood feature films – titled Hello Dankness (2022) was screened at the Berlinale and at the BFI London. Their work is obviously part of the market economy, and I don’t yet know how they can pull this off legally. In Hungary, Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen (2012) by György Pálfi faced many legal problems, which is why it was screened in film clubs instead of cinemas. Then, with a brilliant move, the film was published as an appendix to a book about montage.

Video sharing platforms have fundamentally changed our visual culture, amongst others, introducing the found footage genre. Each day, we come across countless video essays and supercuts, our brain is basically trained to take in flashing pictures. You’ve mentioned that more and more found footage films are being produced, but only a few Hungarian filmmakers experiment with the genre. Why do you think that is?

I think this issue goes much further than found footage films. The genre provides absolute freedom: you don't have to get money to make the film, you don't have to compromise, and with the help of the available technology, you can realize any idea. Found footage films first became popular on YouTube precisely because they are connected to the democratization of technology. So, filmmaking has become super flexible, but it does not mean that the filmmakers’ way of thinking has changed. Despite technological freedom, the film industry is still hierarchical; it dictates what a good script should look like; and there is a lot of money at risk. Hence the logic of the Hollywood film industry and the classic narrative film still dominates our artistic thinking. I have absolutely no problem with Hollywood; I watch these films, I wrote a book about them, and I consider them to be a very important phenomenon. However, it undoubtedly defines the mechanics of the European film industry. Take my own example; I once applied to the National Film Institute Hungary to get funding for a found footage film and the jury simply could not understand the concept. The horizon of opportunities for young people studying filmmaking is also determined by the current system. So, to answer your question, the problem doesn’t start with found footage films, but with the lack of filmmakers experimenting with all kinds of techniques. They don't necessarily have to seek inspiration from the avant-garde and make experimental films; they could direct, for instance, a one-act narrative thriller that takes place in an elevator. Film history has provided us with great examples of creative solutions, but for some reason they are not widely known in Hungary. The responsibility of the lack of creative experimentation of young people rests on the shoulders of schools such as Moholy-Nagy University of Art Design Budapest, the University of Theatre and Film Arts, and Budapest Metropolitan University. Of course, we can’t blame teachers individually, I rather interpret the problem at the systemic level. For three years, I was the head of a Master programme in documentary filmmaking, so I was closely following what had been happening in other institutions. I have found that many educators do not know or do not want to know about alternative forms of filmmaking. They are all parts of this industry, and they cannot point to other ways of filmmaking. There are always exceptions of course, Ildikó Enyedi for instance, who introduces students to the vast possibilities of filmmaking. This is how I teach as well, and fortunately, I have experienced the joy when a student’s alternative way of thinking allows them to create something amazingly new and fresh.