he Book of European Short Pitch. - Nisi Masa

NORA LAKOS
HELEN’S KITCHEN
Tel: +36 705 561 509
E-mail: lakosnora@gmail.com
Intention
I was searching for something in the library when found
an issue of the Hungarian Women Magazine from
1953 by chance. On the cover there was a women riding
a tractor. The main article said: women on tractor
should take sunflower oil from the kitchen and put it on
their face to protect their skin from sunshine.
I turned over and found: those who do not have children
have to pay extra taxes. So surreal but true. So it
means the ideal women work, and have children at the
same time. But we are in Eastern Europe in the 50’s.
These women are not suffragettes, they don’t do it to
free themselves. They are forced by the state to deal
16
HUNGARy
with all these things.
Helen’s kitchen is about a young dreamy, naive, cheerful
pastry girl who is just on the right track to fulfil all
these requirements when her fiancé leaves her. This
point she has to realise no matter how hard she tries
to fit the ideal picture of women, she fails. She has to
loose her naivety and needs to grow up and find her
own way in a strict society.
The film is a playful tale on Helen’s invention that
changes women’s sexual life and in this sense they
free themselves for real.
Synopsis
Helen’s Kitchen is a fairy tale placed in the dawn of Socialism.
A story where Chocolate meets Vera Drake.
There are more women then men after the war. The
competition amongst women to get married is high.
Helen the inventive pastry girl prepares a birthday
cake for her fiancé when he splits for another woman.
Helen is depressed, her tears make all the pastries
salty. She gets fired from the pastry shop.
On top of that, she realises she caught a venereal
disease. Helen sees she is not alone with her problem:
women are scratching secretly in the market, in
the street, everywhere! As Helen is baking wedding
cake for her best friend, she discovers that cacao butter
helps to ease her itching. She starts experiencing.
One morning she finds a thick white cream in her pot.
She forms it to cones. In a few days Helen’s disease
is gone.
Helen spreads her magic cones in a special way. She
places them on the top of her cake as if they were candles.
A secret women movement starts in the city.
PRODUCTION FACTS
Estimated Budget: 35.000 €
PoP Film
Károly Fehér
Will apply for support to the Hungarian National
Television Fund in March 2012.
“A fairy tale
placed in the
dawn of
socialism.”
Director Biography
I’ve been working as a journalist in Budapest,
then one day I got pregnant and
felt this is a new start not only for the baby
but for me, as well. I got admitted to the
Hungarian Film Academy, and made several
shorts as a director. My most recent
short titled: Edina, was selected to the
Sarajevo City of Film program last year so
I could make my first international short.
And even won the British Council Short
Film Award and the SCF special mention
with it! At the moment I’m finishing my
documentary which was developed in the
framework of the Robert Bosch Stiftung
co-production prize program and beside
that I’m writing my first feature script.