WINTER 2007
THE HARMONIC RESISTANCE OF BELA TARR
December 1-17
"DAMNATION and SATANTANGO will be viewed as central works of east European cinema in the decades to come. They sit astride a momentous event in history, the dissolution of the communist world, and document this moment in a way that only great art can." -Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival
At the end of Pacific Northwest filmmaker's Gus van Sant's GERRY, an obscure but influential name appears: Bela Tarr. The Hungarian director is rightfully thanked; without films like SATANTANGO DAMNATION and WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES - Tarr's trilogy of Laszlo Krasznahorkai adaptations - GERRY wouldn't exist. These titles form a stylistic trilogy of some fifteen collective hours, all photographed by Gabor Medvigy in striking black-and-white, they come across as apocalyptic allegories unfolding in downbeat, isolated, film-noir settings: a mud-splattered nightclub called "Titanic Bar" in DAMNATION, an abandoned agricultural machinery plant in SATANTANGO and a small provincial town on the frosty Hungarian plain in WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES. Tarr's reputation remains legendary, partly because he represents a hardline belief in a cinema of patience and severity, of tableaux and long takes. THE HARMONIC RESISTANCE OF BELA TARR stands as a one-man exhibit of cinematic images that dance about for the engaged viewer. Special thanks to Katalin Vadja of Magyar Filmunio. All films in Hungarian with English subtitles.
Series pass: $25/$15 NWFF members
Click here to see Bela Tarr's short, PROLOGUE
DEC 1-3 Fri-Sun at 2pm
SEATTLE PREMIERE
SATANTANGO
(Bela Tarr, Hungary, 1994, 35mm, 450 min., with two intermissions: one 15 min. long and the other an hour.)
Sponsored by University of Washington Russian & East European Studies
Tarr's masterpiece, shown here for the first time in Seattle, has been hailed as a definitive statement on the demise of communism in Eastern Europe. Over seven hours, this epic masterpiece gradually reveals the failure and destruction of a collective farm as seen from the perspective of different characters. Tarr creates a visually sublime, darkly comic and understatedly haunting film on complacency, duplicity and greed. SATANTANGO is intricately structured into twelve overlapping, discontinuous chapters that visually replicate the rhythm of the tango.$12/$7 NWFF Members
"Devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours. I'd be glad to see it every year for the rest of my life." -Susan Sontag
"Brilliant, diabolical, sarcastic...impressed me more than any other film of the '90s." -Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER
DEC 8-10 Fri-Sun at 7, 9:30pm
DAMNATION
(Bela Tarr, Hungary, 1988, 35mm, 120 min.)
Sponsored by University of Washington Russian & East European Studies
Karrer plods his way through life in quiet desperation. His environment is drab, rainy and muddy. Consumed by solitude, his hopelessness would be incurable without the existence of the Titanic Bar and its beautiful, haunting singer. But the lady is married and Karrer is determined to keep her husband away. The first collaborative project between Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krashnahorkai and filmmaker Bela Tarr, DAMNATION is a bleak and nihilistic portrait of isolation, ennui and emotional betrayal. Using a nearly static camera, slow pans, languid character motion, pervasive inclement weather, bleak industrial landscapes and a melancholic soundtrack by composer Mihaly Vig, Tarr captures the desolation and spiritual lethargy of his directionless and morally bankrupt protagonists.
"DAMNATION is the ultimate film-noir, a deeply existential rumination on the miserableness of existence and the search for a meaning or a means of escape." -Susan Sontag
DEC 15-17 Fri-Sun at 6:30, 9:30pm
WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES
(Bela Tarr, Hungary, 2000, 35mm, 150 min.)
Sponsored by University of Washington Russian & East European Studies
Accompanied by a mysterious and uncontrollable figure referred to as "the prince," a traveling circus comes to town offering to exhibit the biggest whale in the world. Despite the bewildering cold, hundreds of people stand around a circus tent erected in the main square to see the stuffed carcass of a real whale. This strange state of affairs - the appearance of the foreigners, the extreme frost disturbs the order of the small town. WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES is an elegantly composed, seductively lugubrious and haunting cautionary tale of moral ambiguity, lawlessness, petty self-interest and inertia.
"A totally sustained immersion in the magisterially bleak, voluptuously monochromatic, undeniably beautiful universe of muddy villages and cell-like rooms." -J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE
