When Alan Parker's film Pink Floyd: The Wall premiered in 1982, many people raised their eyebrows: 'Hang on! I recognised these ideas from Lindsay Anderson's 1968 film!” (Not to mention the school scene in The Meaning of Life.) There is no question that If… was a hugely influential film. One of the last movies from the British New Wave. It was also one of the hardest-hitting films. In 1969, it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. A school film. After the holidays, the kids return to school. With an uncompromising and at times surreal feel and through stories taking place inside a boarding house, If... presents a world dominated by suppression and oppression, meaningless dressage, disdain and empty yet stomach-churning traditions.
One important recurring question in the British New Wave was what young people should do in the world, and what freedom, autonomy and sovereignty means for them. If... takes this idea to absurd lengths. If you don't write your own story, if a patriarchal medium deprives you of the opportunity to make responsible decisions, then you can step across into the world of imaginations and dreams. We are at the end of the rebellious sixties. Ways of altering our consciousness will be a key theme of cinematic reflections over the coming decades. Yet more than anything else, If... offers an insight into anarchy. If you are unable to change the world, if you have no say in it, then bring in gunpowder. It's okay, no need to panic, it's just a film about school. Though the boundaries of the school bear a striking similarity to the boundaries of Great Britain.

In English, with Hungarian subtitles.
The discussions before and after the screenings are conducted in Hungarian.

Presented by: Müpa Budapest