"What would have happened if...” This is always an exciting starting point for telling a story. Many people will immediately think of the American romantic comedy Sliding Doors. Far fewer will have seen Krzysztof Kieślowski's film Blind Chance, which made use of the same dramaturgical conceit two decades earlier in its examination of whether life in the economic stagnation and general hopelessness of the early 1980s offered people any choice. Whether their lives were drive by chance or by ...some kind of necessity. The re-occurring leading role is played by Bogusław Linda, whose career was on the up and up at the time. (He would be invited to appear in several Hungarian films shortly thereafter.) Admittedly, Blind Chance had little to do with this success: on 13 December 1981, martial law was proclaimed in Poland, along with a curfew. This is the tragic year when Kieślowski started to shoot the film, which the authorities later immediately sealed away. And not by chance. The question it poses is a difficult one. (At that same time, we in the "merriest barrack” of Hungary were telling the joke about the two paths available to the intelligentsia: one was alcoholism, the other was impassable.)
This meant that the film would only make it to projection screens in 1987, by which point it had lost much of its topicality. The general idea, however, is still relevant: who or what governs our lives? Are we free to choose our own fates, or are they determined by something else? Or is it simply blind chance that decides where the chips of our lives will fall?
This series has been made possible with the cooperation of the Polish Institute in Budapest.
Presented by: Müpa Budapest
Parking information
We wish to inform you that in the event that Müpa Budapest's underground garage and outdoor car park are operating at full capacity, it is advisable to plan for increased waiting times when you arrive. In order to avoid this, we recommend that you depart for our events in time, so that you you can find the ideal parking spot quickly and smoothly and arrive for our performance in comfort. The Müpa Budapest underground garage gates will be operated by an automatic number plate recognition system. Parking is free of charge for visitors with tickets to any of our paid performances on that given day. The detailed parking policy of Müpa Budapest is available here.
Safe ticket purchase
Dear Visitors, please note that only tickets purchased from the Müpa website and official ticket offices are guaranteed to be valid. To avoid possible inconvenience, we suggest buying tickets to our performances and concerts via the mupa.hu website, the Interticket national network (jegy.hu) or at our official ticket offices.