Béla Tarr Retrospective
To commemorate the life of one of the foremost pioneers of “slow cinema”, The Frida Cinema will be celebrating the work of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr with a four film retrospective of his most groundbreaking and influential works.
Satantango
- Sun, Nov 15
The Frida Cinema's seating is first-come, first-serve. For our Midnight Screenings, please plan on arriving by 11:30pm to ensure ample time for parking, picking up concessions, and securing optimal seats. Screening will begin promptly at midnight.
Director: Béla Tarr Run Time: 432 min. Release Year: 1994 Language: Hungarian
Starring: Erika Bók, László feLugossy, Mihály Víg, Putyi Horváth, Székely B. Miklós
One of the greatest achievements in recent art house cinema and a seminal work of “slow cinema,” Sátántangó, based on the book by László Krasznahorkai is the third film in our Béla Tarr Retrospective. The film follows members of a small, defunct agricultural collective living in a post-apocalyptic landscape after the fall of Communism who, on the heels of a large financial windfall, set out to leave their village. As a few of the villagers secretly conspire to take off with all of the earnings for themselves, a mysterious character, long thought dead, returns to the village, altering the course of everyone’s lives forever. Shot in stunning black-and-white by Gábor Medvigy and filled with exquisitely composed and lyrical long takes, Sátántangó unfolds in twelve distinct movements, alternating forwards and backwards in time, echoing the structure of a tango dance. Tarr’s vision, aided by longtime partner and collaborator Ágnes Hranitzky, is enthralling and his portrayal of a rural Hungary beset by boozy dance parties, treachery, and near-perpetual rainfall is both transfixing and uncompromising. Sátántangó has been justly lauded by critics and audiences as a masterpiece and inspired none other than Susan Sontag to proclaim that she would be “glad to see it every year for the rest of [her] life”. Sátántangó has been restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative by Arbelos in collaboration with The Hungarian Filmlab.
The Turin Horse
- Wed, Nov 25
- Thu, Nov 26
The Frida Cinema's seating is first-come, first-serve. For our Midnight Screenings, please plan on arriving by 11:30pm to ensure ample time for parking, picking up concessions, and securing optimal seats. Screening will begin promptly at midnight.
Director: Béla Tarr Run Time: 155 min. Release Year: 2011 Language: Hungarian
Starring: Erika Bók, János Derzsi, Lajos Kovács, Mihály Kormos, Mihály Ráday
The final film in our Béla Tarr Retrospective is The Turin Horse, his 2011 swan song. Inspired by the legendary 1889 incident where philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche witnessed a cab driver whipping a stubborn horse in Turin, Italy, and collapsed after embracing the animal. The film tracks the bleak, repetitive daily survival of the aging driver, his daughter, and their horse amid a relentless windstorm. Declared by Tarr as his final feature film, it is celebrated as a masterpiece of modern minimalist cinema and long-take cinematography. Don't miss this new restoration on the big screen!