Calendar – Past Event

Mrs. Gyöngyi Magò is a high school teacher in Kalocsa, Hungary. While looking for a subject for her dissertation, she discovered a forgotten part of local history--the Jewish community that once thrived but is now non-existent in her city. She is not Jewish. Engaging her students in her research, she teaches tolerance and fights prejudice in her classroom. Her quest is set against a background of renewed racial tensions, growing intolerance and the recurrence of neo-Nazism in Hungary today.

There Was Once..., directed and produced by Gabor Kalman, is a portrait of this remarkable woman. More than that, however, it clearly demonstrates what one person can do to change attitudes, fight intolerance, educate, champion the truth and ultimately triumph.

The film transcends religions and borders, and carries its message beyond Kalocsa, beyond Hungary, to any place where history might have been forgotten, where intolerance and racism have led to bloodshed.

There Was Once... opens September 23 at the IFC Center in New York and the Laemmle Sunset 5 in Los Angeles.