Béla Tarr

Quote:
In a small, dilapidated village in 1990s Hungary, life has come to a virtual stand-still. The Autumn rains have started. A few of the villagers expect to receive a large cash payment that evening, and then plan to leave. Some want to abscond earlier with more than their fair share of the money. However they hear that the smooth-talking Irimias, who they thought had died, is returning. They are apprehensive that he will take all their money in one of his grandiose schemes to keep the community going.Read More »

SYNOPSIS:
1889.
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse while travelling in Turin, Italy. He tossed his arms around the horse’s neck to protect it then collapsed to the ground. In less than one month, Nietzsche would be diagnosed with a serious mental illness that would make him bed-ridden and speechless for the next eleven years until his death. But whatever did happen to the horse? This film, which is Tarr’s last, follows up this question in a fictionalized story of what occurred. The man who whipped the horse is a rural farmer who makes his living taking on carting jobs into the city with his horse-drawn cart. The horse is old and in very poor health, but does its best to obey its master’s commands. The farmer and his daughter must come to the understanding that it will be unable to go on sustaining their livelihoods. The dying of the horse is the foundation of this tragic tale.Read More »

From New York Times Magazine:
Possibly inspired by the existential play No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre, this story about five people living in close quarters in a small apartment conveys the same angst as Sartre’s well-known story about the nature of hell. Like the 1962 movie version of the play, Oszi Almanach is also garishly lighted, with scenes red-tinted on one side and blue-tinted on the other. Close-ups show a dermatologist’s interest in skin, an example of the kind of bizarre abstraction that underscores the alienation in this film. A single, older mother owns the apartment, where she is tended by a nurse who has brought along a presumed lover. The sick woman’s son lives there too, constantly thinking about how to get his hands on his mother’s money. The last member of this unhappy family is a former teacher now down on his luck and out of work. The three men and the nurse are dependent on the sick woman, on her money and her apartment, just as she is dependent on them. Yet these individuals are two-faced, scheming, and prone to anger. Unable to break away and leave, at the same time they find no solace in staying — making a difficult two hours of misery for the average viewer to take on without a therapist.
by Eleanor MannikkaRead More »

“It’s the rawness of the film that makes us believe we are unquestionably seeing the truth.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A heavy going realistic slice of life domestic drama that is filmed in black and white. It’s a followup to Béla Tarr’s other domestic strife tales Family Nest and The Outsider. This one keys in on marital strife. It’s about a struggling young couple’s confrontations and their own inability to freely communicate with each other. Tarr was evidently influenced by the works of Ranier Werner Fassbinder and John Cassavettes.Read More »

Synopsis:

This story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain. In a provincial town, which is surrounded with nothing else but frost. It is bitterly cold weather – without snow. It is twenty degrees below zero. Even in this bewildered cold hundreds of people are standing around the circus tent, which is put up in the main square, to see – as the outcome of their wait – the chief attraction, the stuffed carcass of a real whale. The people are coming from everywhere. From the neighbouring settlings, from different holes of the Plain, even from quite far away parts of the country. They are following this clumsy monster as a dumb, faceless, rag-wearing crowd. This strange state of affairs – the appearance of the foreigners, the extreme frost – disturbs the order of the small town. The human connections are overturning, the ambitious personages of the story feel they can take advantage of this situation, while the people who are condemned anyway to passivity fall into an even deeper uncertainty. The tension growing to the unbearable is brought to explosion by the figure of the Prince, who is pretending facelessness and is lying low behind the whale. Even his mere appearance is enough to break loose the destroying emotions. The apocalypse that sweeps away everything spares nothing. I does not spare the outsiders wrapped up in scientificness, does not spare the teenage enthusiasts, the people who have philistine fears for ease, the family – nothing that the European culture preserved as from of attitude in the last centuries.Read More »

Synopsis:

An illuminating – and extremely rare – documentary profile of one of the greatest filmmakers of our time, Béla Tarr. Filmed during the production of his final masterpiece, The Turin Horse, this film features clips, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with longtime collaborators.

From December 2008 until June 2010, Béla Tarr gathered his “cinema family” near Budapest for his last film: The Turin Horse. This shooting family, which has been collaborating with Tarr for years or even decades, includes Tarr’s wife/co-director/editor Agnes Hranitzky, cinematographer Fred Kelemen (himself a director of some renown), scriptwriter Laszlo Krasznahorkai, musician Mihaly Víg, composer Akosh Szelevenyi, and lead actors Janos Derzsi and Erika Bok.Read More »

Rarely seen Béla Tarr short, starring composer anc Sátántangó lead actor Víg Mihály. shot on many some of the same locations as Sátántangó.Read More »

A short filme, 5 minutes, part of Visions of Europe.
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1. Föcim (Track 1-6: Öszi Almanach) 1:13
2. Lukin 1:37
3. Õskígyó 1:27
4. Lengyelország 1:42
5. Pajesz 2:00
6. Synth 1:46
7. Csille (Track 7-13: Kárhozat) 1:33
8. Kész Az Egész 8:18
9. Esõ I. 4:24
10. R and R 4:47
11. Lassú Tánc 5:05
12. Körtánc I. 5:38
13. Vonósnégyes 1:44
14. Harang I. (Track 14-20: Sátántangó) 2:47
15. Esõ II. 1:40
16. Halics 3:46
17. Szabad Egy Tangót 3:04
18. Körtánc II. 5:23
19. Pityi 0:13
20. Harang II. 1:33
21. Valuska (Track 21-22: Werckmeister Harmóniák) 4:14
22. Öreg 10:00
1:13:54
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