Here’s a film-making legend who boldly challenges the limitations of space and time, so we thought it appropriate to give him a mention in this issue (we also love love his work).
Bela Tarr began making amateur documentary films inspired by a concern with social problems in urban Hungary at 16 years old. Now heralded as one of the most celebrated filmmakers in world cinema, his work has begun to reflect a preoccupation with more metaphysical problems such as the source of evil. Tarr’s recent films raise the issues of the quality of human life, human responsibility and our place in a wayward cosmos.
He has become renowned for his use of long takes and painstakingly choreographed sequence shots. “… I like the continuity, because you have a special tension. Everybody is much more concentrated than when you have these short takes.” Many such shots in Tarr’s recent films are anything up to eleven minutes long, and he only stops there because the camera physically runs out of film space… “This is my limit, this fucking Kodak (laughs), a time limit. A kind of cencorship…”
His first film in 5 years, The Man From London - a mystery film with ‘deeply existential’ hues, based on the novel by prolific Belgian writer Georges Simenon - premiered at The Cannes Film Festival this year, and will be showing soon at the Edinburgh Film Festival -
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