Tarr is a Hungarian screenwriter and director. As a sixteen year-old he began making amateur films. His works attracted attention from Bela Balazs’s studio and he helped finance Tarr’s first feature film Family Nest (Családi tüzfészek, 1979), which the critics compared with John Cassavettes’ works. His next two films, The Outsider (Szabadgyalog, 1981) and The Prefab People (Panelkapcsolat, 1982), make up the first part of his career characterized by social topics and documentary cinema verité style. His TV adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1982), made in just two shots (the first one lasts 5, and the second 67 minutes) marked a change and announced the second phase in his career. In the mid-1980s he began his collaboration with the writer László Krasznahorkai and made several films based on his novels: Damnation (Kárhozat, 1988), Satan's Tango (Sátántangó, 1994) and Werckmeister Harmonies (Werckmeister harmóniák, 2000). Damnation announced a change in the visual style by which the director became most recognizable (characterized by black and white picture and slow shots), and which peaked in the even-hour-long film Satan's Tango. This film, as well as Werckmeister Harmonies, won the director international acclaim.
Tarr won the award for outstanding contribution to the development of the film arts at the 11th Split Film Festival. His latest two films are The Man from London (A Londoni férfi, 2007), based on Georges Simenon’s short story, and the drama The Turin Horse (A torinói ló, 2011).




More about the director: Béla Tarr - interview

Omnibus Riba / Fish - result of a film workshop held by Béla Tarr during Split Film Festival