Mix

Colour, 35 mm
Hungary, USA, 2004, 97 min
Section: East of the West

Synopsis

Twenty-year-old Mitch is studying classical piano in Los Angeles to please his father Peter. However, what really interests him is club music and he only really feels like himself as a DJ. He doesn’t have a girlfriend but is an enthusiastic consumer of sex on the internet. When Mitch’s grandfather dies in Budapest the young man goes with his father to visit his grandmother Klára. He spends several days in Budapest against his will, during which he has to earn money for his air ticket. He gets to know life backstage at one of the better brothels, where Bea works as an erotic photo-model. He grows close to her and to other frequenters of Budapest’s night life: the petty thief Lou (originally from New Jersey), the pornomagnate Zoltán and others... The film never claims to be a “documentary” portrayal of one of Eastern Europe’s metropoles through the eyes of a young man from the West. It treats primarily the many forms of love and music, linking apparently incompatible musical genres: club dance music, Hungarian folklore and classical.

About the director

Steven Lovy (b. 1964) is a graduate of the department of film and television at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He gained attention with the short student sci-fi film Circuitry Man, on the basis of which he made the feature film of the same name and its free continuation at Columbia Tristar studios. Lovy works with his brother Robert under the label Lovy Brothers. Filmography: the horror Don’t Go Near the Park (1981; actor, dir. by Lawrence D. Foldes), the sci-fi Circuitry Man (1990; co-author of the script, director), A Weekend with Barbara and Ingrid (1992; executive producer, music, dir. by Gregory Neri), the sci-fi Plughead Rewired: Circuitry Man II (1994; co-author of the script, co-director, co-producer), Mix (2003; co-author of the story and script, co-executive producer, director, editor).