All language subtitles for Interview with Bela Tarr

gar was famous for saying that the best

way to criticize a movie was to make

another movie in your work were you

thinking of all of the films as a

critique of other films were you trying

to express or show something that you

felt you weren't seeing in other movies

that you were seeing somehow yeah

first of all I was in the elementary

school when I went to the

cinema I saw only just bad

stories fake acting bad colors it was so

ugly and life it's not like this and in

my films I'm not knocking on the door I

kicked the door I just wanted to punch

in you I just wanted to

beat you shake you move

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you when I was young I had a chance to

see Abu the Su by go some Yono movies

and Soviet movies like Zig verto later I

saw Andre yv by tari and I liked it very

much but I never wanted to be filmmaker

I was 15 when I got an 8

mm camera from my father for my

birthday and this time I was a very

strong leftist guy it's a strange

situation when you are living in a

country which is called communist but

they never been communist it's a fistic

[ __ ] and for me the camera was a tool to

changing the world I made a movie which

it was 25 minutes

long about a gypsy worker group and you

can see how they live how they are

working it was very simple they said

they need permission to leave from the

country they want to go to Austria and

of course the Communist party did not

accept accidentally I met with some

other young filmmakers and I did my

first movie when I was 22 16 mm handhold

camera black and white

nonprofessional actors no script do a

lot of Improv

ration and that movie Family Nest has a

lot of concerns about the condition of

Working Class People in Hungary the

bureaucratic red tape that they

encounter

were you drawing directly on things you

had experienced yourself yes for example

when I became 18 I wanted to go to the

University and they told me very clearly

you never ever will be student in this

country as a wine worked for the ship

Factory taking 20 kgs heavy

irons it was a very hard time for me and

by the end my back was [ __ ] up and I

cannot do it any longer

somehow yes I was mixing in different

fragments and elements from My Life by

the end it wasn't very

sociographic it became a family drama

but the main issue is to show the

quality of the family life and how they

are humiliated and is that one of the

reasons that you cast nonprofessional

actors I did it to show the side of life

and dis discovering the

people there's a credit at the beginning

of the movie that it's presented by the

Bella balash Film Studio is that the

group of other young filmmakers that you

had met and it

was a bunch of Hungarian young f makers

did not have any chance the government

said okay you can do what you want but

you cannot presented was the film shown

in Hungary at the time no two years

later but somehow I was lucky and the

film won at the Manheim film festival

and afterwards when I went back to

Hungary they could not do anything with

me because I became well known M somehow

I was free when you made your first

movie it's easy because you don't look

left or right after the first movie you

got new questions and film by film you

are just

developing your film language this is

your job plus I respect the audience the

audience is full of intelligent

adult and uh clever people I have to

give my best and of course my best was

different in my first movie then the

second and the third in the beginning I

was just thinking about social problems

and then afterwards came some

ontological

problems later we just see

the [ __ ] is cosmical thinking about the

whole world

global this brand which is called

bilar now is

including four people ages RIT Mi the

composer

L the writer and

me you first collaborated with llo crash

no archive on your film damnation can

you talk about how that collaboration

started I was reading the manuscript of

the shatan Tang the first novel of L

this was a very deep novel and I was

thinking I really would like to meet

with him because I like very much his

style how he's using the words we met

and we decided to make

Shan but government did not allow me to

do it so we started to work on D nation

which was a very old idea about woman

who is singing in a bar and almost 10

years later we could start shant Tango

did you know from the beginning that

shatan Tango would be a film of un

unusual length for a feature film we

estimated

6 hours by the end it became 7 hours and

15 minutes a little bit longer the sense

of time and of living in a space with

the characters of the film is something

that's present from really very early in

your work even if it's expressed

somewhat differently there are typically

very long takes and very long scenes

workmeister is 39 shots in two and and a

half hours a lot of them involve very

elaborately choreographed movement of

the camera and the actors I'm wondering

if you can talk a little bit about the

use of time in your movies yes I have my

own Manas because long monologues and to

see a face as a kind of landscape it was

in the first and then till the

last most films ignore time

because the logic of the films is action

cut action cut action cut they are

following the linear storytelling I

never interested about this let's say a

piece of wall can be a story because you

have to understand how you can involve

the time movement the space the

landscape they are very important for me

godar said a real filmmaker edits in the

camera and of course he

forgot and he was using a lot of cut by

the end but I took

seriously when I was young usually one

take is one scene and you cannot do

anything with this long take on the

editing table it means agnesh was all

the time in the set and she was watching

on the monitor she was checking we are

on the right

Rhythm and plus for me it was all the

time

interesting when the camera is rolling

the tension between the two person it's

building up and if you are moving the

space it's showing all the time

different faces or we can see the same

thing from different

angles and sometimes I do not stop the

scene even if the scene it was done

because I'm curious how you will react

if the camera is still rolling

you cannot escape from the situation you

can discover lot of small details and

you will reach the human being the human

life that's why we did not write a

script we never talk about the film we

are just talking about the life what we

see how we see how we feel this is how

we work the situation has to be human

and

simple we had a script written for the

banks for the foundations and for the

financing but we never use it normally I

have some small cards in my pocket and

one card is one word or one sentence and

this is my

script because if you have proper

casting and they are just being not

playing half of your job is

done this is a dirty job because I'm

haunting their emotions and I'm stealing

their

personalities and I show on the screen

you have to respect their dignity and

you have to treat them as real Partners

if I have a good casting if they have

strong

personality I can trust them well that

begs the question in the specific case

of vermeister about the casting of Lars

Rudolph you said that you didn't think

you could make a film from Crash noar's

novel The Melancholy of resistance until

you

discovered Lars Rudolph what was it

about him specifically that made the

entire film come together in your mind

his personality it was similar to the

character I did not direct him I just

told him this is the situation and we

come from here to there he will react

like how he is

reacting

for of course normally we don't have

script but at the beginning the dialogue

was very important he was doing some

improvisation during the take but I was

pushing him to follow the logic because

this is a important issue that viewers

has to understand and of course the

choreography was also

important that scene is in a way a dance

number with Lars choreographing the

Denis of this bar to replicate the

movements of the planets around the Sun

do do you typically start thinking about

the space and the camera and then bring

the actors in are they there from the

beginning and you're choreographing

everything all together the main issue

is spontan if I'm rehearsing with them

too much it doesn't work it's

contradiction because the camera

movements are very complicated we have

to tell the actors the basic movements

because they have to be in the same

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rhym but you feel it when the camera is

rolling when everybody's together

including actors the crew and me too we

are breing in the same Rhythm it's

really looks like best

sex this is the reason V you

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do related to this idea of people being

in Rhythm and Unison I also wanted to

talk about your composer Mii Vig because

this is another shift that happens as we

move into the tar Kash noorai V era is

that original score becomes a very

strong element in the films whereas when

we look at the early films with the more

neorealist style we either don't have

music or we have a song on the radio or

something similar the music is also one

of the main character it's strongly

there it was

1983 when I started to work with Mi V

and I asked him go to the studio before

the shooting I need to know the

music because it's influencing the way

of the shooting and the r would you ever

play the music on the set yeah we did it

several times because it helps with the

doly

movements there is in my mind and I

don't know if you see it the same way a

sense when we're watching workmas

harmonies that initially we could be in

almost any time or place I hope so

because when you are thinking about some

Eternal things in this case you have to

ignore the concrete and that's why I

don't show fashion or cars because the

cars were different in the' 60s 70s 18

all the time because of capitalism new

new they are pushing the writers in the

film industry to create new stories

since the Old

Testament every story is same it's there

everything look how it's starting a

brother killed the other you can see

there is mother killing you can see

there is the Holocaust you can

see everything a giant whale for

example workm is a movie that to use the

language of today we could say is on

some level about fake news it deals with

the way in which rumor and innuendo can

whip Ordinary People into a panic and

fear and begin to fray at the fabric of

order when we made this movie we were

just thinking this is a nice fairy tale

and it's never will be real but now if

you just switch off the news you can see

un fortunately it became

real you retired from making feature

films after the tourin horse though

you've continued to work in film

teaching making shorts making a site

specific Cinema project in Vienna can

you talk a little bit about the decision

to close the feature film chapter of

your career but how you have continued

to work in in cinema step by step you

are building up a language but this

language it's based on what you want to

say the language and let's say

message are Hand by hand and I had a

feeling of the toing horse what can I

say to you more yes this was a very nice

chapter in my life but the life is not

finished and I'm going ahead in a

different way

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