Béla Tarr, a Hungarian film director and pioneer of “slow cinema” who was acclaimed for dark, apocalyptic films such as “Damnation” and “Satantango,” has died. He was 70 years old.
The European Film Academy, where Mr. Tarr had been a member since 1997, announced the death on Tuesday, saying that Mr. Tarr passed away that morning “after a long and serious illness.” In a statement, the academy said: “We pay tribute to an outstanding director, a strong political voice, and a man deeply respected by his colleagues and admired by audiences around the world. The grieving family asks for the understanding of the press and the public, and asks that no statements be made in these difficult days.”
Tarr was a pioneer of the “slow cinema” movement, which featured black-and-white footage, long uninterrupted takes, minimal dialogue, a rejection of traditional narrative plots, and often dark and mundane depictions of daily life in Eastern Europe. This is perhaps best exemplified in the 1994 feature film Sátántangó. The seven-and-a-half-hour film depicts the struggles of a small Hungarian village after the fall of communism. Despite its length, the film is the most highly regarded of Tarr’s works and is often included in lists of the greatest films of all time.
Born on July 21, 1955 in Pécs, Hungary, Tarr had several small television roles as a child before beginning his filmmaking career at the age of 16. His amateur films soon caught the attention of Bela Ballas Studios, which helped him finance his 1979 feature debut, The Family Nest. He then enrolled at Budapest’s Dramatic and Film Academy, graduating in 1982, and founded the Tarslas Film Studio, where he worked until its closure in 1985 for political reasons (Tar was outspoken about his anarchist beliefs). During this period, Tarr made three more films: “The Outsiders” (1981), “Prefab People” (1982), and “Autumn Almanac” (1984).
His fifth film, Damnation (1988), a drama about a depressed man who falls in love with a married singer, was the first Hungarian independent film. The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and was widely praised for establishing Tarr’s signature controlled camera movements on a global scale. After a six-year hiatus, Certantango was released in 1994, and Tarr’s other most acclaimed work, Werckmeister Harmonie, premiered in 2000. Co-directed by his wife, co-producer and editor Agnes Hranitzky, the two-and-a-half-hour film consists of just 39 cuts and depicts the life of a man and his uncle during Hungary’s communist era. Times change and an evil circus comes to town.
Tarr and Hranitzky’s 2007 film The Man from London, starring Tilda Swinton, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to generally positive reviews. In 2011, Tarr and Hranitzky debuted The Horses of Turin at the Berlin Film Festival, about a horse-whipping incident in an Italian city that was rumored to have caused Friedrich Nietzsche’s mental breakdown. The film won the Grand Jury Prize, and Tarr announced that it would be his last film.
After The Horses of Turin, Tarr dedicated his life to mentoring young filmmakers and founded the Film Factory School in Sarajevo in 2012. He was a professor and program director at the school until 2016, and guest teachers included Swinton, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Carlos Reygadas, Pedro Costa, Gus Van Sant, Juliette Binoche, and Jacques. Ranciere.
Tar survived Hranitsky.
