Filmmaker of a reinvented time, goldsmith perpetually touched by the question of the human condition, inveterate researcher of the foundations of the world, Béla Tarr has fashioned in nine feature films, four short films and a film for television, a radical and visionary work, with fascinating formal beauty. (Béla Tarr Retrospective, Center Pompidou 2011)
Béla Tarr, director, screenwriter and producer, born in 1955 in Hungary, began filming at the end of the 1970s. He is recognized by his peers as an original and demanding author, giving, through his cinema, a unique experience of duration and a unique vision of the world. Awarded at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011, where he received the Silver Bear for his latest film The Turin Horse, his radical work is seen beyond all borders, thanks to the intensity and universality of its visual splendor. Combining literature, theater, painting and music with cinema, his striking vision of a social reality is echoed in certain works today. Considered visionary by some – including Susan Sontag, Jim Jarmusch and Gus Van Sant or Martin Scorsese – the work of the master of Hungarian cinema Béla Tarr appears as the last triumphant breath of a certain European school, from Carl Dreyer to Andreï Tarkovsky, without forgetting Miklós Jancsó. Béla Tarr initiated the opening, in September 2012, of the Sarajevo Film Factory, a doctoral course set up in cooperation with prestigious professionals, actors and directors from around the world.
