Honfoglalás

Ferenc Demjén was born in Diósgyőr in 1946, the son of an engineer at the local ironworks who lost his job for political reasons, after which the family moved to Budapest. In his early bands he and his older brother built their own guitars, using cupboard shelves for the bodies and making the electronics themselves. He found national fame in the 1970s as singer and songwriter with Bergendy, then left in 1977 to front his own group, V'Moto-Rock. Alongside his own records he became a sought-after lyricist, writing songs for other singers and for films, among them Szerelem első vérig in 1985. In 1996 he wrote the lyrics for the songs of Honfoglalás, a historical epic directed by Gábor Koltay for the 1,100th anniversary of the Magyar conquest, and performed some of them himself. The film itself fared badly with critics, who mocked its slow story, overblown dialogue and anachronistic props, such as a striped watermelon. Audiences came anyway: 504,742 tickets made it the sixth most-watched Hungarian film since the end of communism. The song that carries the film's name fared better than the film. Several of the songs Demjén wrote for the screen became hits that are still played often. The same year he was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit, and in 2012 he received the Kossuth Prize. The film is remembered mostly for its flaws; its song took on a life of its own.