Director's note

Not only do I respect László Hudec’s 30 years of architectural workmanship and find his personal story compelling and even inspiring, I also have a personal connection to his story and the archival material he left behind – he was my husband’s grand-uncle. The woman who recently discovered half a century worth of documents and pictures on her back porch – all written or created by Hudec himself– is my mother-in-law.

And she has entrusted me, as well as some of the other relatives in the family, with creating the“Hudec Heritage Project,” an effort to research and archive these new documents – which even Hudec’s own children, living in the U.S.and Canada, do not know about – and to create from them a documentary film, a book and a website.

Ever since I made my first documentary film, Journey Home, which is about my sister and my search for our father’s true story about his role in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 -- my husband’s family said they also have a ‘famous’ relative who might deserve a more in-depth investigation and film, and, in a word: recognition. While L.E. Hudec was and is still famous in Shanghai, he is not as well known in Europe, and almost entirely unknown in his native land – Hungary.

Now that the Year of Hudec in China is celebrating the 50^th anniversary of his death, in a city that is once again feeling an economic, cultural and architectural rebirth – the spotlight has again turned to his work. “Uncle László” has always been part of the family legend, and now that the Chinese have ‘rediscovered’ him as the famous Hungarian architect, the family has also dusted off the boxes and boxes of letters and photos and albums preserved in wooden trunks and entrusted them to me.

This material is beginning to reveal – although much research is still to be done on them -- more about Hudec than just his famous architecture. I doubt that I would be devoted to making a biographical film about just an architect. On the contrary, the person behind this architect – L.E. Hudec – and the material that has recently come to light is almost a screenplay for a feature (fiction) film. His life mixes personal fate and that of big History, difficult choices and right decisions - and it even allows us to give a historical perspective towards today's China. But not in a cold, distanced, didactical way. In a way that today’s audience can follow the ups and downs. In a way that one can feel what it meant to be an exile, a POW, a self-made man, a famous architect, a believer and a father - all in one man.

As documentary filmmakers know, at times real life is more interesting than fiction.

This is one of those times.

Réka Pigniczky