Béla Tarr has been described as “hopeful cynic” and “scatological mystic”, a filmmaker making dystopian fables on the fall of Communism. But his political critiques of a terminally corrupt regime refuse to be pinned down to a specific historical moment and, to the modern viewer, take on a metaphysical quality – a comment on inevitable entropy of all systems, biological, psychological, and social.

With the dream of Liberal democracy faltering, we are offered new utopian visions from the ideologues of Silicon Valley. New sublime objects, the modern equivalent of Werckmeister Harmonies’ miraculous whale, litter the contemporary landscape, whilst the reality of climate change produces ever more weather events akin to Tarr’s unremitting rain, wind and mud.

As Werckmeister Harmonies’ lead character Janos threatens when describing a total eclipse to a group of stupefied drunks, “Will heaven fall upon us?” Or is their hope?

Asked of one of his films at a film festival, “Where is the hope?” Tarr dryly retorted, “The hope is that you see this movie.”

Programme

Damnation – Friday, September 13, 2024 at 7.30pm

Werckmeister Harmonies – Friday, September 20, 2024 at 7.30pm

The Turin Horse – Friday, October 4, 2024 at 7.30pm

Sátántangó – Sunday, October 20, 2024 at 1pm

All films in English subtitles

Damnation (1988, 4K restoration)

Certification 15

In a desolated landscape, Karrer lived for years cut off from the rest of the world, passing his time by staring at dumpsters disappearing under an endless rain. His only social links are the Titanic, a pub where he spends every night, and his boss, Willarsky. Attracted by a woman who sings in this bar, he tries to seduce her. The film opens with a series of extended takes, drawing the viewer into a narrative of desire and betrayal set in an industrial town that evokes a bleak, rundown version of Hell.

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Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, 4K restoration)

Certification 15

Béla Tarr delves into a dark, infernal form of quasi-surrealism in this adaptation of László Kraszahorkai’s 1989 novel The Melancholy of Resistance. An innocent young man witnesses violence break out after an isolated village is inflamed by the arrival of a circus and its peculiar attractions: a giant whale and a mysterious man named “The Prince.” Captured by a team of cinematographers, including the renowned director Rob Tregenza, this film is Tarr’s most deeply nocturnal creation – an unmatched, haunting cinematic nightmare.

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The Turin Horse (2011, 4K restoration)

Taking its cue from Nietsche’s famous encounter with a mistreated horse on Via Carlo Alberto, The Turin Horse depicts the aftermath of this seemingly innocuous but destructively profound confrontation. Following a man and his daughter in their daily routine, a bizarre series of disturbing events slowly begin to strip life of its very essence resulting in a terrifying, all-consuming finale. Raw, compelling and emotionally devastating, Béla Tarr’s final film is a daringly original and searingly vivid work of artistically precise, philosophically rigorous filmmaking that has left audiences the world over gasping for breath. This work is also committed to Tarr’s ‘remodernist cinema’ that seeks to capture the rhythm of life in real time and to raise a sharp awareness of the moment.

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Sátántangó (1994, 4K restoration) 

Certificate 15

Film starts at 1pm and finishes at 9pm, with 2 x 15 mins interval breaks.

Voted for in Sight & Sound’s 2022 Greatest Films poll Sátántangó has claims to visionary greatness, not least for reinventing the nature of cinematic time. Tarr’s seven-hour adaptation of Krasznoharskai’s novel, Sátántangó follows members of a small, defunct agricultural collective living in a post-apocalyptic landscape after the fall of Communism who, on the heels of a large financial windfall, set out to leave their village. As a few of the villagers secretly conspire to take off with all of the earnings for themselves, a mysterious character, long thought dead, returns to the village, altering the course of everyone’s lives forever.

Content warning: Contains scenes of animal cruelty and infant death.

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Part 1: 138 mins
Part 2: 124 mins
Part 3: 177 mins