From his well established work as a painter and designer, Zoltán Huszárik brought to his films a vivid and precise use of color and editing. Huszárik began his film studies in 1950 at the Academy of Theater and Film Art. When after three years he was unexpectedly advised to leave, he found a patron in veteran director Károly Makk and was reinstated after a difficult struggle. Huszárik went on to play a significant role in the Sixties boom of Hungarian film art as a founding member of the Béla Balázs Studio, where he made several short films which gained him international recognition. Sinbad, his first feature, was made in 1972. On its release, Peter Cowie wrote in International Film Guide:
“Audiences at Oberhausen (Film Festival) six years ago were perplexed by a Hungarian short called Elegy (Grand Prize winner), which made ravishing use of color and which was edited with a degree of imagination rare in a first film. Now Zoltán Huszárik has moved on to his first feature, and it is just as sophisticated, just as startling in its assurance.”
Huszárik continued to make short films and in 1979 released his second feature, Csontvary, which was shown at the 1980 Cannes Festival. Huszárik's untimely death last year deprives the cinema of a director of stature and promise.

Csontvary
Huszárik reconstructs the life of the visionary Hungarian painter Csontvary, who lived at the beginning of the twentieth century. The artist's psychology is contrasted with that of a modern-day actor preparing to play the role of this complex character and who becomes increasingly consumed by his subject. “Csontvary again returns to the painterly realms of Sinbad...though with...(a) shift chiefly dictated by the change of protagonist: the turn-of-the-century naif painter Tivador Csontvary (1853-1919) lacks the lothario attributes of Sinbad, blazing instead with a visionary fire in which nature and history (often represented by the majestic remnants of past civilization) combine in a deceptively simple celebration of light and color.... Huszárik and cameraman Peter Jankura create one dazzling tableau after another, matching canvas with celluloid at great pains (ancient Taormina revealed by sunlight is especially memorable)....”--Derek Elley, Films and Filming.
“The images are sumptuous, especially during the artist's travels in Italy and the Balkans and the amazing over-the-top finale with soldiers and chorus girls cavorting in the Hotel Gellért baths....”--National Film Theatre