Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr, known for stark, influential cinema, dies at 70

Bela Tarr, the acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker behind Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies, has died at age 70 after a long illness, Hungarian media reported Tuesday.

FILE PHOTO: 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 the newly launched Film Factory at

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo

Bela Tarr was regarded by critics as one of the most important European auteurs of his generation and was often compared to Michelangelo Antonioni for his austere style and long, meditative takes. Tarr said he drew inspiration from filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and from the paintings of Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch.

Though relatively little known outside Hungary, his work was highly influential in international art-house cinema. His 2011 film The Turin Horse, co-directed with his wife and longtime editor Ágnes Hranitzky, won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

According to Germany’s Tagesspiegel newspaper, the film’s Hungarian premiere was delayed after Tarr criticized the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban in an interview, accusing it of waging a “cultural war” against artists and intellectuals.

Despite the film’s success, Tarr announced that The Turin Horse would be his final feature.

Throughout his career, he frequently collaborated with writer and screenwriter László Krasznahorkai, who won last year's Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as with Hranitzky, whom he described as a co-director of his films.

(jh)

Source: PAP