György Matolcsy, the longtime director of Hungary’s Pannónia Film Studio, died on August 2. He was 91.
Born on May 9, 1930 in Kecskemét, Matolcsy earned a degree in law and economics, but also studied cinematography at the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts. In the 1950s, he was among the founders of what would become Pannónia, the Budapest-based lynchpin of Hungarian animation’s rise to global prominence.
As head of Pannónia from 1959 until his retirement in 1995, Matolcsy oversaw its growth into the second-largest animation studio in the Soviet Bloc (after Moscow’s Soyuzmultfilm). He produced hundreds of animated films and series, including the Oscar-winning short The Fly, the long-running adult series Gustav, and the feature Son of the White Mare by Marcell Jankovics (who died in May).
