Dr. Beáta (Beja) Margitházi

MargithaziBAssistant professor

After receiving her degree in Hungarian and English Language and Literature (BA) and Sociolinguistics (MA) at BBTE, she accomplished her doctoral studies at the ELTE BTK Aesthetics PhD Program, where her dissertation investigated film historical and theoretical questions of the face close-up. After graduation she became assistant lecturer at the Department of Communication Studies at Pázmány Péter University, where she taught courses on film history and visual communication. She also worked as visiting teacher at the Culture Management Department of Vitéz János College (Esztergom), and at the Photo, Film and Video specialization of the Sapientia Transylvanian Hungarian University (Cluj). She is assistant professor of the Department since 2008.
She is also co-founder and editor (2001-2015) of Filmtett monthly film magazine, available online at www.filmtett.ro. She is the editor of Metropolis quarterly journal of film history and film theory (2019–).
She was also a team member of Research Group on Hungarian Film History, co-working on the research project Social History of Hungarian Cinema(1931–2019).
Her writings, critical essays and translations have appeared since 1995 in edited volumes, periodicals and magazines, including Színház, Ellenfény, Korunk, Idea, Balkon, Filmtett, Filmvilág,Filmkultúra, Apertúra, Metropolis, Studies of Eastern European Cinema, Iluminace and Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: Film and Media Studies.
Research areas and interests: classic and cognitive film theory, visual studies, theory of trauma, documentary film.

Professional Activities & Affiliations

  • Visual Rhetorics (2010/64) thematic issue of Hungarian art theory journal Enigma, co-editor
  • Visual Communication. Anthology (Budapest: Typotex, 2010) co-editor
  • NECS(European Network for Cinema and Media Sudies) member (2009–)
  • Magyar Filmtudományi Társaság (Hungarian Association of Film Studies) member (2019–)
  • MUÓSZ (The National Association of Hungarian Journalists) member(2023–)

      Participation in fine art projects:

  • Travelling Drawing School(with Ágnes Blaskó, Studió Gallery, Budapest, 2010)
  • Sounds of Kitchen (with Péter Szabó, The KNOT Project, Berlin, 2010)

Areas of Teaching / Courses Taught

  • Film and Psychology
  • (Documentary) Film and Trauma
  • Face and Close-up in Cinema
  • Film Analysis: The Image
  • Text Visualization
  • Critical Reading
  • Research methodology

Areas of Supervision

  1. Film and trauma
  • Trauma theories and film theories
  • Individual / collective traumas and representation
  • Trauma stories in fiction films
  • Documentary film and trauma
  • Experimental methods in trauma representation
  1. Early film history and theory:
  • The style, creators and topics of early film (e.g. Lumiére Brothers, Méliès, Williamson, Porter, Smith, etc.)
  • The development and the end of the primitive representation mode (PRM) (e.g. acting, camera work, editing, staging, etc.)
  • The beginnings of motion picture theory (e.g. Münsterberg, Balázs, Epstein, etc. their theories in the context of silent film era)
  1. Film and visual communication:
  • Film and advertisement: the film poster (e.g. motives and compositional trends; the relation of text−image−film)
  • Film and intertextuality (e.g. reconstructing and interpreting a given film’s intertextual relations)
  • Film actor style (e.g. role, type and character in a given actor’s acting style)
  1. Film style:
  • The historical development/change of a given plan type, or stylistic form of expression (e.g. shot / reverse shot, long take, flashback, zoom, etc.)
  • Interpreting and analyzing one director’s style (e.g. Dreyer, Bresson, Cassavetes, Wong Kar-wai, etc.)
  • The historical and theoretical concerns of the face close-up (e.g. its role in the classic Hollywood style, in a single director’s oeuvre, in a given historical era, in the case of a genre, or style)

Selected Publications

Contact Details

Institute for Art Theory and Media Studies

Department of Film Studies
Eötvös Loránd University
Mail: Múzeum krt. 6-8.,
1088 Budapest, Hungary
Room -134, basement

E-mail: margithazi.beata _at_ btk.elte.hu