Fine Cuts: The Art of European Film Editing

22  Béla Tarr Interviewed by Jonathan Romney, National Film Theatre, London, 15.3.01

With kind permission of Béla Tarr and Jonathan Romney. The simultaneous translation was by László Hackenast.

The Hungarian director, Béla Tarr, has created a radical cinema which subverts conventional narrative and amongst other things ignores continuity as an editing device. His partner, Ágnes Hranitzky, is also his editor and co-filmmaker. Their films are built on long takes usually involving considerable camera movement, which at one level are reminiscent of that other Hungarian radical Miklós Jancsó. Yet there is something more disturbingly everyday about the milieu conveyed by their work. Their relationship with the composer is particularly unusual – more ...