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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Ryan Gilbey

Béla Tarr obituary

Film director Bela Tarr poses for a picture after an interview in Sarajevo February 21, 2013. Revered Hungarian director Tarr's famously uncompromising approach to cinema will now be passed to future generations as he begins a new course for budding filmmakers in Sarajevo. Last week classes began at his newly launched Film Factory at the Sarajevo University School for Science and Technology, REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo
Béla Tarr in Sarajevo, where he launched the film school film.factory in 2013. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

Susan Sontag once claimed she would be “glad to see” Béla Tarr’s 1994 masterpiece Sátántangó “every year for the rest of my life”. No small compliment given that the film is more than seven hours long.

Tarr, who has died aged 70, earned the reverence of cinephiles on the basis of a handful of austere, poetic and painstakingly slow black-and-white films including Damnation (1987), Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) and his swansong The Turin Horse (2011).

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