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Béla Tarr

Across a small but essential body of work, Béla Tarr established himself as one of the major voices in world cinema.

Hungarian maestro Béla Tarr, who has a reputation as the dark magus of European ‘slow cinema’, has been hailed by Susan Sontag as a torchbearer for cinema’s future. Tarr is best known for his visionary latterday films, from the legendary Satantango, to the film he decided would be his last, The Turin Horse; their style is unmistakeable – with its use of darkness, hazy light and slow, searching camera movements that make time and space warp before our eyes. Buts as his cinema evolved – building on the influence of an earlier Hungarian long-take master, Miklós Jancsó – it retained many persistent concerns, including compassion for outsiders and the oppressed, an awareness of the destructive power of violence and venality, and unshakeable faith in the intense power of drama – sometimes hypnotic, sometimes incendiary.

- Jonathan Romney, season curator