In addition to controversies over a monument to Hungary's 1956 anti-Soviet uprising and the awards given to Hungarians who helped suppress it, now we have a nice little controversy over allegations that the government is suppressing a film about the revolt.

According to Hungarian-American Klaudia Kovács, the director of "Torn From the Flag," the film was offered for "educational purposes" to Minister of Education and Culture István Hiller, but he rejected the offer. Meanwhile, Kovács says the government - which includes numerous figures who were party members before the system change - is conspiring to otherwise block its local release.

The documentary, which features the work of award-winning cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond and László Kovács, focuses on the collapse of communism and what role the 1956 revolution played in the transition to democracy. It has been screened at various film festivals in "the West" and won an award at the Tiburon International Film Festival in California.

It remains unclear as for how specifically the government is allegedly working to prevent the film from being distributed locally. But given how several other films about '56 seemed to have had no problems making it into local theaters during the 50th anniversary of the event, maybe the answer is that the thing was just a bit too late to tempt local distributors, cinema-goers and anyone else who should have been the logical audience for the film. In other words, it is probably being "blocked" not by ex-Communists, but by simple market forces. Then again, one of the biggest complaints we always hear from our most stridently anti-Communist friends about the country's current government of ex-Communists is how the reds are too market-friendly.