Esther Kinsky's 'Seeing Further' Explores Hungarian Cinema's Decline and Meditative Vision

In her book 'Seeing Further,' German translator and novelist Esther Kinsky reflects on the social role of cinema in Hungary, describing it as a collective experience where emotions like wit and terror were shared publicly. She traces the decline of cinema-going from its peak in the 1920s, when Budapest boasted over 100 cinemas, to the post-Soviet era, noting that film has become a private luxury due to industry economics and personal screens. Kinsky's work blends travelogue with meditation, journeying through southeastern Hungary's lowlands and Budapest, her former home, while linking cinematic vision to the vast horizons of the Great Hungarian Plain. She emphasizes a practice of close looking, chronicling prolonged gazes at acacias, cornfields, and rail tracks, arguing that seeing is a skill acquired over time and space. The book, translated by Caroline Schmidt and published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, is priced at £12.99 in softcover. Kinsky recalls how cinemas once served as community hubs, with even train stations and traveling 'theatres on wheels' bringing film to remote villages until the early 1990s. She portrays cinema as a refuge offering a 'shelter with a view' into broader possibilities, contrasting it with today's isolated viewing experiences. Her meandering sentences mirror a meditative vision, suggesting that seeing requires both temporal and spatial engagement.