András Kepes


András Kepes is a Hungarian author, television host, documentary filmmaker and academic. He is Professor of film and media and Chair of the Council of Arts of the Budapest Metropolitan University.

Life

András Kepes was born in Budapest, Hungary, and grew up in his native city, as well as in Beirut and Buenos Aires, where his father, Imre Kepes was stationed as a diplomat. He lives in Budapest with his wife, Mária Dettai. He has six children: Júlia, Borbála, Rozália, Kata, Lujza, Lukács.

Education

Educated in Hungary, Lebanon, Argentina and the U.S. he earned and MA in literature and aesthetics from Eötvös Loránd University, Doctor of Liberal Arts and Dr. habil. of film and video from the University of Theatre and Film Arts, Budapest. He was a John S. Knight Fellow Fellow at Stanford University and a Fulbright Scholar at New York University.

Career

As a senior producer and host of the most popular Hungarian TV channels Kepes has produced cultural programs and documentaries in Hungary as well as in more than 40 countries around the world. In them, he has covered a wild range of topics including the most important International film festivals, the Nobel Prize ceremonies, the life of native people in the Andes, in the Canadian Rockies, in the rainforest of the Amazons and in the deserts of Asia, the coexistence of cultural minorities in Africa, the Chinese culture after the cataclysmic political changes, modernism and traditions in Kuwait and Japan, the Tibetan culture in the Himalayas, Yugoslavia during the war, American cinema and Latin-American literature. To mention but a few guest actors and directors of his shows: Woody Allen, Lindsey Anderson, Peter Brook, Glenn Close, Federico Fellini, Elia Kazan, Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni, Jean Marais, Yves Montand, Fernando Rey, Martin Scorsese, Donald Sutherland, Billy Wilder; musicians: Dave Brubeck, Donovan, Steve Reich; writers: Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Mario Vargas Llosa; visual artists: André Kertész, Antoni Tapies, Alexandre Trauner, and even the Dalai Lama. As a visiting lecturer and later as a professor in film and media studies he has taught at various universities. From 2008 he is Professor of film and media at the Budapest Metropolitan University. Between 2010-2014 he was Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Arts of this university. Since 2008 the main focus of his career has been writing.

Books