DOKU.ARTS
Zeughauskino Berlin
10.09.–12.10.2014

Tarr Béla: I Used to Be a Filmmaker

The celebrated Hungarian film director (Sátántangó, Werckmeister Harmonies, The Turin Horse) recently announced that he is retiring from active filmmaking to run a film academy in the Balkans. The many fans of his unique brand of existentialist questioning are bound to be disappointed that – unless he can be persuaded to change his mind – there will be no more additions to the oeuvre. Meanwhile, however, we can count ourselves lucky to see the director in action - on the set of his most recent film The Turin Horse (2010) - in a new documentary that patiently explores Tarr’s working methods, simultaneously engaging him (he is famously reticent) about his wider philosophical convictions. Tarr is well­known for the elaborate complexity of his travelling shots. Lamoure’s documentary shows examples of these arduous sequences being set up, with all the additional behind­the­scenes activity (intricate crane manoeuvres, portable wind­machines, clever lighting rigs) that are required to give the sequences in question “authenticity”. A fascinating insight, then into the mechanics of film illusion. But probably the main pleasure of the documentary comes from listening to Tarr himself as he goes about his business, accompanied by his co­writer and long­term companion Ágnes Hranitsky. Patently, he inspires great loyalty among his crew. He is not afraid to play the patriarch. “[Filmmaking] is quite a feudal system because someone has to decide where to put the camera. Democracy does not belong to the world of art. There is no democracy in art, any more than there is in life,” he says, with a smile on his lips.