Béla Tarr (born July 21, 1955 in Pécs, Hungary) is a Hungarian film director and screenwriter widely considered as the most unique artist to rise from Hungary in the past 20 years. This article was based on and expanded from Jason Ankeny's excellent biographical piece from All Movie Guide. July 21 is the 202nd day (203rd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 163 days remaining. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Pécs   listen? (Croatian: Pečuh, German: Fünfkirchen, Slovak: Päťkostolie, Turkish: Peçuy) is the fifth largest city of Hungary, located in the south-west of the country. ... The film director, on the right, gives last minute direction to the cast and crew, whilst filming a costume drama on location in London. ... Screenwriters, scenarists or script writers, are authors who write the screenplays from which movies are made. ... All Movie Guide is a free-access, commercial database for information about films and television programs and their actors. ...

Early life and career

He began to realize his interests with film-making at the age of 16 by making amateur films and later working as a caretaker at a national House for Culture and Recreation. His amateur work brought him to the attention of the Bela Balazs Studios (named in honor of the Hungarian cinema theorist, Béla Balázs), which helped fund Tarr's 1979 feature debut Családi tűzfészek (Family Nest), a work of socialist realism clearly influenced by the work of John Cassavetes. The 1981 piece Szabadgyalog (The Outsider) and the following year's Panelkapcsolat (The Prefab People) continued in much the same vein, but with a 1982 television adaptation of Macbeth, his work began to change dramatically; comprised of only two shots, the first shot (before the main title) was five minutes long, with the second 67 minutes in length. Not only did Tarr's visual sensibility move from raw close-ups to more abstract mediums and long shots, but also his philosophical sensibility shifted from grim realism to a more metaphysical outlook similar to that of Andrei Tarkovsky. Béla Balázs (August 4, 1884, Szeged – May 17, 1949, Budapest), born Herbert Bauer, was a Hungarian-Jewish film critic, aesthete, writer and poet. ... John Cassavetes John Nicholas Cassavetes (December 9, 1929 - February 3, 1989) was a Greek American actor, screenwriter, and director. ... Scene from Macbeth, depicting the witches conjuring of an apparition in Act IV, Scene I. Painting by William Rimmer This article is on the play Macbeth by Shakespeare. ... Andrei Tarkovsky Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (Андре́й Арсе́ньевич Тарко́вский) (April 4, 1932 - December 28, 1986) was a Russian movie director, writer, and actor. ...

Collaboration and international acclaim

After 1984's Őszi almanach (Almanac of Fall), Tarr (who had written his first four features alone) began collaborating with Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai for 1987's Kárhozat (Damnation). A planned adaptation of Krasznahorkai's epic novel Sátántangó took over seven years to realize. The film, a 415-minute masterpiece, finally appeared to international acclaim in 1994. After the epic he released a 35-minute film Journey on the Plain in 1995 and fell into silence until his most recent work to date, the 2000 film Werckmeister Harmóniák (Werckmeister Harmonies), occasionally shot in very intense circumstances. The film itself was very warmly welcomed by critics and the Festival circuit in general.

At the moment he is filming his first film in 5 years, The Man from London and it was scheduled to be released at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival in May, but production was shut down because of the suicide of producer Humbert Balsan on February 10, 2005 and disputes arose with the other producers over a possible change in the film's financing. 2005 Festivals poster The 2005 Cannes Film Festival started on May 11 and runs to May 22. ...

Most of his work is virtually unavailable on DVD, but two of his films, Damnation and Werckmeister Harmonies, are available on DVD in Europe as a double-disc set and three of his films Family Nest, The Outsider, and The Prefab People are available on DVD in the USA.

External links

• Béla Tarr at the Internet Movie Database