Renowned Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr dies

Renowned Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, celebrated Kossuth- and Balázs Béla Prize winner and creator of masterpieces like Sátántangó and Werckmeister Harmonies, has passed away at the age of 70 on Tuesday, director Fliegauf Bence announced to MTI on behalf of the family.

Béle Tarr dies

With profound sorrow, we announce that Tarr Béla, the visionary film director, died in the early hours of this morning after a long and severe illness, stated the Hungarian Filmmakers’ Association in a communiqué sent to the Hungarian News Agency on Tuesday.

Born in Pécs in 1955, Tarr launched his extraordinary career at just 16 as an amateur filmmaker. He later honed his craft at the Balázs Béla Studio, Hungary’s pivotal hub for experimental cinema, where he crafted his debut feature, Family Nest, in 1977.

Countless successes

Tarr blazed a trail with the first independent Hungarian feature film, Damnation, unveiled at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1988 to resounding international acclaim. From 1989 to 1990, he resided in Berlin as a guest of the DAAD Berlin Artists’ Programme, then took up a guest professorship at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB), continuing to teach there until 2011.

Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony called Béla Tarr the freest man in the world:

In 1997, he was elected a member of the European Film Academy. In 2003, he founded TT Film Workshop, leading it until 2011; it produced his films while he also served as producer on key projects by other major artists.

After declaring his 2011 feature The Turin Horse his final work and closing the book on his oeuvre, Tarr devoted his career’s next chapter to teaching, championing the evolution of new filmmaking forms – as noted in the statement.

Farewells from Béla Tarr

In a Facebook post, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony praised Tarr as “the freest man I have ever known”. “One couldn’t but love him. Because he had endless love for the essence of man, human dignity,” he said.

Tarr’s reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at last year’s Budapest Pride festival was “unforgettable”, Karácsony said. Even as “one of the most famous Hungarians and Budapest citizens”, Tarr had been very proud to become honorary citizen, he said, adding: “It breaks my heart that I couldn’t hand [the honorary citizenship] over to him.”

“Dear Béla, we will try to continue to live life. Thanks for everything, and all the best on the other side,” Karácsony said.

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences said on its Facebook page that Tarr “determined as a priority of the education of filmmakers that filmmaking cannot be indifferent to human suffering, and that one of the most current tasks in the training of filmmakers is to highlight social sensitivity.”

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