I was born in 1964. It was the year when President Johnson outlawed abolished racial discrimination, the Tokyo Olympic Games started, Khrushchev was ousted and Brezhnev came into power, Jack Ruby was sentenced to death in Dallas, China joined the A-bomb club, the Vietnam war started, Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and finally, what really mattered: the Steel Rolling Mill Plant in Diósgyőr opened its gates. By-the-way: it's not that difficult to keep in mind my date of birth: September 11. This later also became an important date.
Let's skip my young years. Let's just say that my behavior sparked serious troubles in school when I was around 15, but thanks to some well-intended teachers, eventually I did not get expelled from school, even more so, I got admitted on my first attempt to Budapest ELTE Law School. However, I didn't spend too much time there with studying the legal disciplines as there was a quite a good amateur film club at the university, called Vizuális Műhely (Visual Workshop) lead by the best film educator ever András Péterffy. I learnt from him the basics of film making. Practically, I dedicated all my time to the science of film and motion picture making. Besides I had also been appointed as the leader of the students' philosophy club, which later on proved to be a big mistake as the students' club became a group of dissidents, where I invited several opinion leaders of the opposition and showed movies banned by the communist power. I could, however, hang in there for quite a while, as I was eventually expelled after one year and a half. By that time I had developed quite strong relations with the democratic opposition, well, of course, with those at the bottom of the hierarchy, since I worked as a volunteer delivery boy.
Besides the Law School, I also managed to get a diploma from the Media Department of ELTE University, so I got in addition to my big shot lawyer title in '89 a degree that was really useful. People working in the media do not much use scientific titles, such as PhD or anything similar, because it would sound funny. I don't use it either.
In the mid '80s I got some awards for my amateur movies, really low-budget ones, made with only a couple of tens of dollars. As a result I was invited to join the "Balázs Béla" Film Studio (BBS). That was indeed an achievement as at the studio only young moviemakers with a proper degree obtained from the Film Academy could work. The "Balázs Béla" Film Studio was the only genuinely progressive film workshop in the '80s. I was given mainly petty jobs, but it was a great honor to be around anyway. In the spring of '88, Fekete Doboz (Black Box) came into being within the financial help of the Soros Foundation at the BBS. The Black Box was the first Hungarian video magazine and the first video-samizdat. The very name "Black Box" was Andris Lányi's idea. We had strong ties with the democratic opposition, which existed illegally, but became stronger in the ‘80s. We documented events where the official state-run press was not even allowed to go, so those images became the only documents of the opposition movements of the era that preceded the change of the political regime. We were shooting films on various rallies, including the protests against the construction of the Bős-Nagymaros dam, the first meetings aimed at establishing the opposition political parties, and brutal police attacks, basically about all issues that were officially considered as classified. We were the first documentarist group of the opposition, which meant that we were also forced to work illegally. We edited every second or third month the takes we had made into a documentary, which we then copied to a couple of hundreds of VHS cassettes to be passed from hand to hand. The first documentary for instance, had been preceded by such a conspiracy that none of the other 5 guys of the editorial board knew in which basement I was copying the tapes using 6 or 7 VHS recorders borrowed from friends. Those were exciting times. Maybe that was the most exciting time of my life.

By 1989 the situation got slightly better, as some of the communist leaders, at least the smarter ones, sensed that the pillars of the dictatorship were shaking. There were more and more street demonstrations, but without the brutal police interventions, so that no people got beaten up or taken away by the police. To be frank, I kind of got bored with the situation getting better, and felt that I would be better off in a more exciting environment. In August ‘89 I went to Prague along with the FIDESZ and SZDSZ leaders at that time. Well, only those of us got there who hadn't got arrested on the border. So, I got on camera one of the biggest Czechoslovak opposition rally on Vaclav Square, in Prague. Rather, I would have gotten it, hadn't I been arrested by the police at the very beginning of the protests. Luckily, the recorded scenes were saved, ‘cause while the police was taking me away, I managed to throw the camera to Mónika Mécs. As she struggled to escape, the mass of people opened up and then closed back behind her, just like once the Red Sea did, so the coppers could not get hold of her. The events were reported by several international news channels, including the Hungarian public broadcaster, whose reporters then just walked into the Czechoslovak TV, and sent to Budapest, without any problems, via satellite the footage. The nightly news program, which at that time was undergoing important changes, aired the scenes of my arrest that very night, and that is how Hungary got to now about the existence of the Black Box.

My days as inmate passed in monotony, except for a couple of more serious abuses. Obviously, the Hungarian Foreign Affairs did not bother at all to free us. Fortunately, Lajos Taba, the consul in Prague really had done his best, so they released us after a few days, and expelled us from the country. Tamás Deutsch and others had been kept in for some more days, but eventually they were freed as well. Then they put a stamp in our passports that we are persona non grata, and could never set foot on Czechoslovak soil again.
This was just the more embarrassing as in a few weeks unrest started in the GDR, too, with rallies all over, and masses of protesters (the official Hungarian term as of 2006: hooligans and vandals) were facing riot police, who had no problems being gentile and beat up and arrested the participants. We started off immediately, but we had to overcome a slight obstacle, namely to get through Czechoslovakia having the expelling stamp in my passport. I chose a resourceful solution and stuck a piece of chewing gum on the problem-pages of my passport, so when the border guard checked it, failed to spot the very important annotation.
We then had some very exciting days in Dresden and Berlin. CNN was taking over our footage so as to avoid the watchful eyes of the Stasi, and for this reason we picked the men's room at Alexander Platz as our secret meeting point. The janitor looked a bit surprised when two guys went into the same booth at the same time, but seemed to understand us, displaying an early PC attitude towards minority groups. Of course, GDR police did not fail to beat up and arrest us for a while, but apart from that nothing serious.

Later we caught on camera the turmoil in Poland, the revolution in Romania and Moscow, and managed to get in Nagorno Karabakh on a weapon smugglers' chopper with my friend, Zoli Lovas, just when the war broke out. We were there in Vilnius, when Soviet elite troops intervened to suppress the independence movement. There I saw the most horrifying dead bodies in my life. I saw the body of a young woman cut in two, when a Soviet tank ran over it.
Things were happening also in Hungary. When making the Duna-Gate documentary we sneaked out from the basement of the secret services some files that served as evidence that the Hungarian state party breached their promise and ordered surveillance and taping of the opposition leaders. Poor István Horváth, the last communist home affairs minister had to step down, just weeks before the elections, which did not do much good to the hated state party, by then re-named MSZP (Hungarian Socialist Party). The opposition parties allowed only our crew to the Opposition Roundtable talks, as they only trusted us. Free elections were then held in the spring, and by fall everything changed. An era came to is end; times of danger and conspiracy were over. Something beautiful and dangerous and romantic was over; maybe the best times of my life were over.

Sub pondere crescit palma, goes the Latin saying, which means that certain things tend to get better under adverse conditions. This might have been our case, since after the political pressure released, the legendary Black Box underwent a crisis. Tensions occurred. Maybe we didn't know how to deal with our suddenly came freedom. I and some other young artists left the editorial board. There was a lawsuit around the name Black Box, and eventually the court ruled that I should use a "distinctive name". That's how we became "Pesty Black Box". I registered the new name, so now it's under trade mark protection, and I use this trade mark for my work.

The ‘90s brought some disappointment. Our friends in Fidesz and SZDSZ who had formed the consistent and radical leaders of the political changes ended up in opposition, and we also were disfavored by the cultural policy of the MDF government, which denied the part we had played in the political changes, and wasted no time in calling us rather bizarre names, such as cosmopolites, traitors, Jews' henchmen, and so on.
"This isn't what we wanted" – we thought, and tried to stay afloat in the slightly strangely shaped TV market. By that time we already had incorporated a company.
Then governments came and went away, and we just continued making documentaries. We made a film about the genius János Déri, who passed away tragically much too soon, an absurd movie on Ferenc Morvai, a boiler dealer who thought he could find the tomb of the Hungarian poet Petőfi, dead and lost for ever during the Revolution of 1848, and we also made an investigative documentary on the neo-Nazi movement about to be reborn at that time and their leader Albert Szabó. And about many other things we thought to be not okay. I worked a lot as war correspondent. I made 5 reports in the Yugoslav frontline; I got in with my crew three times in the besieged city of Sarajevo. We also worked in war-torn Chechnya, and in some adventurous way we eluded the vigilance of the Russian army and found our way to the Chechen rebels in the real frontline, where I made an interview with the lieutenant of the famous guerilla leader Shamil Basayev. Then, somehow the ‘90s ended. My company went bankrupt in ‘96. Maybe I wasn't aware of the peculiarities of the Hungarian culture market, maybe I was too naive to realize that even though the system was democratic it was also closed and corrupt, and that there was no market for our documentaries. I sold the video equipment of my studio, sent away the crew, paid my debts and retired. I made an unwary promise in an interview not to deal any more with political issues and such documentaries. Ever. And of course, I couldn't keep it. Well, I kept my promise for only 10 years.

Astrologists say that once you grow older than 30-32 years, the sign becomes less important, and the ascendant is dominant. My ascendant is Scorpio. Those who believe in astrology say that Scorpio has some positive and some very negative features. The Scorpio never shows its feelings without reason, is a determined and good tactician, and plans ahead, but is bent on revenge and never forgets. And, yes, he is able to come back from nothing, and recovers from complete disasters and terminal situations.

Hard times came. I had plenty of time to do some thinking. Old friends tend to disappear, business partners evaporate, and somehow the air becomes less breathable in such times. Then again suddenly everything changed. Two private TV channels started to operate, the TV 2 and the RTL Klub. The owners and managers at TV2 were old friends of mine who appreciated my previous work. One day, before going live, quite unexpectedly, Pisti Pálffy popped in to see me. He had news for me. They were about to put together the programming and wanted me to take a part in the new television. At the very beginning I was making a weekly magazine, Gyökereink (Roots), which was dedicated to the issues and culture of 13 ethnic minorities. Then Forró nyomon (Hot Trail) started to be aired almost every week, which was the police show of TV2, produced mostly by my companies. By that time I established 2 new production companies and was interested in a third one. Then new requests, new challenges and new programs came. The crew grew bigger than ever before and we had more equipment. I learned what private TV meant. All of us had to learn that lesson. We made, of course, commercial productions, too, but that was a good experience as well. I am not ashamed of it. I could quote here what the old Bunuel said towards the end of his life: "I made bad movies. But never declassed ones." To put it nicely, we strengthened our financial positions as well, in fact things got better than I ever hoped. Still, I was missing something. I was missing the old style, the investigation, the danger, the adventure and the creative process of a really valuable documentary. And then I got a request from the Hungarian Public TV to produce a real kind of „Black Boxy" documentary show. I was given total freedom and a respectable budget. The show was entitled Pesty Black Box and went on air for nearly 3 and half years in primetime. The topics were always of public interest, we investigated serious issues; however, the style, the editing, the camera movements and the voiceovers were different, so the whole show was more like private TV-style. And it had a good rating. And was appreciated also by the others in this trade. We participated with the show three times at the Kamera Hungária TV festival and won all three times. The festival director, Ákos „Topi" Csermely said Pesty Black Box is the record holder with that performance. We traveled through 4 continents, from Brazil to North Korea, from West Sahara to the North Sea. We sent pictures from the frontlines in Afghanistan and followed the trails of the Sicilian and Russian mafia. We investigated special issues in Hungary, using mainly a rough, naturalist, frank and critical approach. We had not dealt with only one issue: politics. No home affairs, no foreign affairs.

All good things must come to an end. The socialist won the 2002 elections, and although I never hurt them in any of my shows, one of their leading politicians instructed a TV boss, called simply Mr. 10%, ended the show. Then other troubles came my way. In 2002 the new owners changed almost the full management at TV2, and almost all producers who were in good relations with the previous leadership, were sacked. So, in 3 months all my shows ceased on every channel. Only 2 people lent a helping hand: Zsolt Bocskai, editor-in-chief of Klub Radio offered me a radio show, but I really didn't feel like it. I thought it wasn't my type of show. Help came also from one of the bosses at Duna TV, but there wasn't enough money to do that project. So, I cut again the budget of the company, but we did not stop working. I learned my lesson from the '96 bankruptcy, and restructured my companies. I sold 2 of them, and invested all my money and efforts in the undertaking I was left with. I realized that there is life beyond television; I started doing business in communication, PR and advertising. I'll discuss this under the "business" menu.
The functioning of the company allowed me with some time to each year a longer documentary, from my own funds, of course, taken from the company's profit. In contrast to other documentarist groups, my production company has not got a penny subsidy since 2002 for making movies. We have filed several applications, and I believe we had quite good synopses, but somehow we got refused every time. Let me just tell you a bizarre example: we participated in the bid of the National Radio and Television Commission to produce films that popularize reading and novels. Everyone knew it was a hoax, as the bid was just launched so that the 12 "friendly" producers win who had previously been selected by the National Public TV to make for them the „Big Read" show. In the last instance Annamária Szalay revealed the racket. Namely, that an open tender was used to smokescreen that they had beforehand decided who gets the money. The scandal broke out, but the 12 chosen ones got their money. Not a little money. Around USD 125,000. Still, this is not the point. All bidders had to pay in advance some USD 3,000. If your bid is great, the synopsis is good, and you flawlessly filled in their complicated forms, but just not won due to lack of funds, the Commission would still keep 25% of your initial payment. So, ultimately I sponsored with 750 bucks the organization that is supposed to finance my film. But that's okay, we just laughed about it.
Luckily the business wasn't slow, and I could sponsor myself for directing and producing 2 success films about the life of the homeless heroin-addicts, the junkies. These 2 movies became important to me for other reasons, too. I met Mari Kubus, the editor of both of my films, and with whom I came together because of this project. And, more importantly, our being together not only resulted in a film, but also in the birth of an amazing baby-girl, Polli Réka Pesty. And the films I have been making ever since are all edited by my soul mate, Mari Kubus: "Budapest végállomás" (Budapest Terminus) was the most watched documentary on the 2004 Hungarian Film Festival, and "Egy nap" (One Day) was also a success. Institutions dealing with drug prevention, schools and Tabán Cinema regularly play these two films mainly to students aiming at drug-prevention.

Then the year 2005 came, and I started the movie that needed the most preparation, money and brought the most problems. The movie "Egy hiteles ember" (An Authentic Person) follows through the life of the Hungarian premier, Mr Ferenc Gyurcsány. I have testimonials on the movie never heard before, and events that have never been told before. I produced and directed the film, so you can imagine the criticism I got, which I really would not want to cite here, as this website wishes to remain a decent place, but rest assured, it had lots of f words. The other half of the country said it was a cult movie, and with a slight exaggeration they said, well, finally the Hungarian Michael Moore is born. As none of the TV channels wanted to air the movie, I posted on the Internet. The result: 700,000 downloads and 300,000 media streaming. Some fans made 10,000 copies, make no mistake, ten thousand copies, and distributed them throughout the country. Others made 5,000 copies; some made 7,000 and so on. We got about 1.5 million viewers. You can read about the technical details under the "Business" menu as this is a strictly Internet-based story. In the summer of 2006, I became the head of the campaign of the independent candidate István Tarlós, supported by FIDESZ in the race for the mayor's office. You will find more details about that under the dedicated menu point. My recent film "Wounded celebration" is posted on the opening page of my web site, with subtitles, so no details about it here. If you are interested, watch or download it. My friends and my soul mate helped me in the making of this film. Sanyi Fábry advised me about the drama effects and PR, Ákos Kovács wrote the music, Mari Kubus edited it, and Ferenc Bőzsöny did the narration. Luckily this movie also sparked scandal, so I don't have to worry about the PR.

All in all, I guess this brief and slightly subjective autobiography confirms the Latin saying: "Refert si bonus an velis videri", i.e. it is important that you are good, not that others think you are good.