The History of Aviation Balint Keyneres

We would normally start with a simple synopsis, but presenting the aesthetics may give a better idea of this film: The History of Aviation is built of a series of long sequences filmed with telephoto lenses in a sumptuous widescreen format. The camera glides over a coastal landscape, framing a group of people moving around and looking for a little girl who’s gotten lost from her family.

The effect of this choice is an image that moves steadily, engaging in a fluid choreography which surveys the horizon whilst juggling with multiple possibilities of composition and depth of field. This Hungarian short is clearly an exercise in style and control, where no improvisation is allowed. The natural background is completely dominated by this ostentatious camera that is not afraid to let us remark its presence. There is surely no realism here: the scenery seems to be chosen to fit the choices of framing, not the other way around.

However, it’s not all about aesthetics. The title is The History of Aviation, and yet there’s no mention of the facts and people involved in the beginnings of mechanical flight. That’s what makes this episode so interesting: the main reference to aviation is probably that of the camera itself, shooting from afar, moving along cliffs and beaches as the frame alternates from one character to another.

But there is one explicit reference to flying (and what a special moment it is), when the roving camera suddenly stops and contemplates a tiny dot moving through the sky. The important action that follows lasts only a few seconds and is shared with no one but a silent little girl and the audience. “May this be our little secret”, the film seems to imply; and the birth of aviation becomes a small, familiar event under the complicity of our gaze.

One of the interesting things here is to see a short film conceived not as an aesthetic experiment, but as a narrative one. Hungarian director Bálint Kenyeres proposes quite an unusual way to tell a story; in which a moment in the history of aviation is mostly built by the direction rather than by the screenplay itself.

Bruno Carmelo