Péter Forgacs

Péter Forgács (1950) is a media artist and independent filmmaker based in Budapest, whose works have been exhibited world wide. Since 1978 he has made more than thirty films. He is best known for his "Private Hungary" series of award winning films based on home movies from the 1930s and 1960s, which document ordinary lives that were soon to be ruptured by an extraordinary historical trauma that occurs off screen.

In 1983, Forgács established the Private Photo & Film Archives Foundation (PPFA) in Budapest, a unique collection of amateur film footage and has made this material the raw data for his unique re-orchestrations of history.

In 2002 The Getty Research Institute held an exhibit of his installation The Danube Exodus: Rippling Currents of the River . His international debut came with the Bartos Family (1988), which was awarded the Grand Prix at the World Wide Video Festival in The Hague.

Since then he has received several international festival awards- in Budapest, Lisbon, Marseilles, San Francisco and Berlin, where he won the Prix Europe for Free Fall.

In the last decade, Forgács exhibited in Antwerp, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Prague, Bochum, Sao Paolo, New York, Rome, Graz, Fellbach, Warsaw, Krakow, Amsterdam, Newcastle, Ostrava, Mardid, Barcelona, Karlsruhe, Brugge, Los Angeles, Den Hague and Vienna. Various public collections, museums and universities keep Forgács highly recognized works.