- Occupation
Producer, Director - Country
Hungary
Pigniczky Reka
Journey Home: a story from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956
Journey Home is a documentary film about two sisters who try to find out what their father did as a freedom fighter during the Hungarian revolution of 1956. The story unfolds as the two women take their father's ashes from the U.S. to Hungary, to fulfill his dying request to be buried in his native land, where he never returned after fleeing in 1956. The journey veers off course when the sisters realize that their father's role in Hungary's uprising was never really questioned nor documented. Taking place in Budapest a half-century after the fateful events that took nearly 3,000 lives and forced more than 200,000 Hungarians to emigrate, Journey Home documents László Pigniczky's daughters as they take a personal, sometimes disturbing, sometimes humorous trek into the history of 1956.
Incubator
A documentary film about the transformation of an exile community nearly twenty years after the end of the Cold War. This film is about growing up in an exile community in the West, developing a double-identity, and becoming a hyphenated-somebody. It’s about learning to have two homelands at the same time - one in real life, and the other imagined and maintained by parents who were forced to flee. It is about a first generation of children whose parents lived abroad longer than they originally expected to, and who never really assimilated.
The Life of László Hudec: in his own words
L.E. Hudec (1893-1958) was a Hungarian architect who fled the vicissitudes of Europe in the early 20th century, taking with him the style and knowledge of European building design and construction. His work - spanning nearly 30 years of Shanghai’s economic and cultural ‘glory days’ - includes the first skyscraper from London to Tokyo. New archive materials surfaced from his descendants in Hungary and the U.S. show a man living at the crossroads between Europe and China. Through his childrens' testimony, through his incredible film footage, and through our research of his footsteps, his story gives an extraordinary inside look at the first rush of Europeans to China, of its first modernization, and of the turmoil of the 20th century.
Journey Home is a documentary film about two sisters who try to find out what their father did as a freedom fighter during the Hungarian revolution of 1956. The story unfolds as the two women take their father's ashes from the U.S. to Hungary, to fulfill his dying request to be buried in his native land, where he never returned after fleeing in 1956. The journey veers off course when the sisters realize that their father's role in Hungary's uprising was never really questioned nor documented. Taking place in Budapest a half-century after the fateful events that took nearly 3,000 lives and forced more than 200,000 Hungarians to emigrate, Journey Home documents László Pigniczky's daughters as they take a personal, sometimes disturbing, sometimes humorous trek into the history of 1956.
Incubator
A documentary film about the transformation of an exile community nearly twenty years after the end of the Cold War. This film is about growing up in an exile community in the West, developing a double-identity, and becoming a hyphenated-somebody. It’s about learning to have two homelands at the same time - one in real life, and the other imagined and maintained by parents who were forced to flee. It is about a first generation of children whose parents lived abroad longer than they originally expected to, and who never really assimilated.
The Life of László Hudec: in his own words
L.E. Hudec (1893-1958) was a Hungarian architect who fled the vicissitudes of Europe in the early 20th century, taking with him the style and knowledge of European building design and construction. His work - spanning nearly 30 years of Shanghai’s economic and cultural ‘glory days’ - includes the first skyscraper from London to Tokyo. New archive materials surfaced from his descendants in Hungary and the U.S. show a man living at the crossroads between Europe and China. Through his childrens' testimony, through his incredible film footage, and through our research of his footsteps, his story gives an extraordinary inside look at the first rush of Europeans to China, of its first modernization, and of the turmoil of the 20th century.
Réka Pigniczky is a television journalist, producer and independent documentary filmmaker. She’s worked for the Associated Press Television News for over 10 years, both in New York and Budapest, Hungary. She completed her first feature-length documentary, Journey Home: a story from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, at the end of 2006. It won awards in Hungary and was invited to screen at a number of international film festivals. She completed her second feature-length documentary, Inkubátor, in 2010, which saw a wide audience in Hungary through a national theatrical release as well as television broadcast, and it enjoyed wide critical acclaim after the Hungarian Film Festival. The film was also voted one of the 25 best films released in Hungary in 2010. 56 Films is actively involved in Hungary’s documentary community, and Réka has taken part in a number of festival juries and international documentary projects. She is also a member of the European Documentary Network (EDN) and the International Documentary Association (IDA). Réka has an MA in journalism and international relations from Columbia University in New York, and she also has an MA in political science from the Central European University in Budapest. Réka was born and raised in the U.S. by Hungarian refugee parents, and has been living in Hungary since 2002.
Réka Pigniczky is a television journalist, producer and independent documentary filmmaker. She’s worked for the Associated Press Television News for over 10 years, both in New York and Budapest, Hungary. She completed her first feature-length documentary, Journey Home: a story from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, at the end of 2006. It won awards in Hungary and was invited to screen at a number of international film festivals. She completed her second feature-length documentary, Inkubátor, in 2010, which saw a wide audience in Hungary through a national theatrical release as well as television broadcast, and it enjoyed wide critical acclaim after the Hungarian Film Festival. The film was also voted one of the 25 best films released in Hungary in 2010.
Réka co-founded 56 Films in Hungary with Barnabás Gerő in 2005, and the company has produced two feature-length documentaries as well as two shorts. 56 Films is also actively involved in Hungary’s documentary community, and Réka has taken part in a number of festival juries and international documentary projects. (Please see: www.56films.com) She is also a member of the European Documentary Network (EDN).
Réka has an MA in journalism and international relations from Columbia University in New York, and she also has an MA in political science from the Central European University in Budapest. She has a BA in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego. Réka was born and raised in the U.S. by Hungarian refugee parents, and has been living in Hungary since 2002. She also spent the early 1990’s working as a political consultant and volunteer organizer for women’s NGO’s in Hungary.