Northwest Film Forum

December 1-17, 2006

"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