Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, dies at age 70

Béla Tarr, the Hungarian filmmaker and “slow cinema” pioneer acclaimed for his dark, apocalyptic films including “Damnation” and “Sátántangó,” has died. He was 70.

The European Film Academy, of which Tarr had been a member since 1997, announced the news on Tuesday, saying he had died that morning “after a long and serious illness.” In a statement, the academy wrote that it “mourns an outstanding director and a personality with a strong political voice, who is not only deeply respected by his colleagues but also celebrated by audiences worldwide. The grieving family asks for the understanding of the press and the public and that they not be sought for a statement during these difficult days.”

Tarr was a pioneer of the “slow cinema” movement, which was characterized by black-and-white visuals, long and uninterrupted takes, minimal dialogue, a rejection of the traditional narrative plot and often bleak, mundane depictions of everyday life in Eastern Europe. This is perhaps best embodied in his 1994 feature “Sátántangó,” which clocked in at seven-and-a-half hours and shows the struggle of a small Hungarian village after the fall of communism. Despite its length, the film became one of Tarr’s most critically acclaimed works and is often included on lists of the greatest films ever made.

Born in Pécs, Hungary, on July 21, 1955, Tarr held several small TV roles as a child before beginning his filmmaking career at 16. His amateur films soon caught the attention of Béla Balázs Studios, which helped to fund his feature debut, 1979’s “Family Nest.” He then enrolled in the Academy of Theatre and Film in Budapest, graduating in 1982 and founding the Társulás Filmstúdió, where he worked until it was closed in 1985 for political reasons (Tarr was outspoken about his anarchist beliefs). During this period, Tarr made three more films: “The Outsider” (1981), “The Prefab People” (1982) and “Almanac of Fall” (1984).

His fifth film “Damnation” (1988), a drama about a depressed man in love with a married singer, marked Hungary’s first independent film. It premiered at Berlin Film Festival and established Tarr’s signature controlled camera movement on a global scale, earning widespread acclaim. “Sátántangó” followed in 1994 after a six-year break, with another one of Tarr’s most lauded works, “Werckmeister Harmonies,” premiering in 2000. Co-directed by his wife, collaborator and editor Ágnes Hranitzky, the nearly two-and-a-half hour film consists of just 39 shots and follows the life of a man and his uncle during Hungary’s communist era and amid a sinister circus that comes to town.

Tarr and Hranitzky’s 2007 film “The Man From London,” starring Tilda Swinton, premiered at Cannes Film Festival to generally positive reviews. In 2011, Tarr and Hranitzky debuted “The Turin Horse,” about the whipping of a horse in the Italian city that was rumored to cause the mental breakdown of Friedrich Nietzsche, at Berlin Film Festival. It won the grand jury prize, and Tarr announced that it was to be his last film.

After “The Turin Horse,” Tarr dedicated his life to teaching young filmmakers and founded the Film.Factory school in Sarajevo in 2012. He was a professor and the head of the school’s program until 2016, bringing in visiting teachers including Swinton, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Carlos Reygadas, Pedro Costa, Gus van Sant, Juliette Binoche and Jacques Rancière.