Central European Artists in the Spotlight

Hungarian actor Levente Molnár (from the 2016 Golden Globe Award-winning and 2016 Oscar nominated film Son of Saul) in discussion with theatre and film director Gábor Tompa

Improvised musical associations by performer-composer Daniel Szabo

  Levente Molnár is a London-based actor and a member of the Hungarian Theatre of Kolozsvár. Apart from Son of Saul (Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Language Film), he is known for his work in Marian Crisan’s Morgen (2010) and András Hatházi’s Tetemre hívás (2002). He has received the Contemporary Hungarian Culture of Transylvania Award and has been lauded for his passion for acting. László Nemes’ Son of Saul (Saul fia), a critical hit at the Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar hopeful in the foreign language film category, is amasterful debut feature film that brings an entirely fresh visual perspective on the Holocaust.

Gábor Tompa is a Romanian theatre and film director. Between 2007-2015, he has served as Head of Directing Theatre and Dance Department of the University of California, San Diego. He is the artistic director of the Hungarian Theatre, which has been a member of the Union of the Theatres of Europe (UTE) since 2008. He graduated in stage and film directing at the I.L. Caragiale Theatre and Film Academy in Bucharest in 1981 as a student of Liviu Ciulei, Mihai Dimiu, Catalina Buzoianu, founders of the world-famous Romanian school of stage directing. He has directed more than 100 productions worldwide and produced another 100. His feature film The Chinese Defense won the prize for the Best Movie at the International Film Festival in Salern, Italy, 1999.

Daniel Szabo is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based performer-composer. He grew up in the culturally stimulating environment of Eastern-Europe where his artistic path had been shaped by the amalgam of a wide-spectrum of music influences, such as classical, jazz and several folk idioms. After being trained by outstanding mentors in the country of Bartok, Ligeti or Miklos Rozsa and receiving his Masters degree at the prestigious New England Conservatory. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. Szabo is a proficient and versatile composer-arranger working in jazz, film or classical music idioms.

Cosponsors: The Hungarian Club at UCLA, The UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies, The UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies