Miklós Varga

István, a király ("Stephen, the King") is a Hungarian rock opera written by Levente Szörényi (music) and János Bródy (lyrics), based on the life of Saint Stephen of Hungary. The storyline was based on the play Ezredforduló (Turn of the Millennium) by Miklós Boldizsár, who co-wrote the libretto. The opera was first staged in 1983 on an open-air stage in Budapest. This first performance was also made into a 1984 film, directed by Gábor Koltay, and its music released on an album. The musical became a smash hit and is still very popular in Hungary and among Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries.

In the open-air cinema-like scenery domestic rock bands get time for a short movie clip each, linked by an also short musical frame-play. Each of the altogether eighteen clips is a whole film etude playing with visual-lingual associations, film ideas, revealing the back-thought of the songs, and on the whole sometimes melancholicly, sometimes ironically the hopeless, sad picture of the era can be distinguished.

Hungarian version of the reality contest where a group of castaways split between two or more “Tribes” are taken to a remote isolated location and are forced to live off the land with meager supplies. Frequent physical challenges are used to pit the tribes against each other for rewards, such as food or luxuries, or for “Immunity”, forcing the other tribe to attend “Tribal Council”, where they must vote off one of their players.