Legendary Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr will give a presentation about The Film Factory at the Hackesche Höfe Kino.
‘Our aspiration is to work with mature filmmakers who think responsibly, with the spirit of humanism, artists who have an individual outlook, an individual form of expression and who use their creative powers in the defence of dignity of a man within the reality that surrounds us.’ With this kind of rationale behind his new school The Film Factory, it may come as no surprise that the Hungarian director Béla Tarr wanted to be a philosopher before he became a filmmaker. His new school has grown out of a collaboration with other prominent international film artists such as Tilda Swinton, Carlos Reygadas, Guy Maddin, Pedro Costa, Gus Van Sant and Fred Kelemen, all united in their passion for teaching a selected group an artistic approach to filmmaking.
The director of Damnation (1988) is presenting his new initiative The Film Factory, part of the Sarajevo Film Academy of the University Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, during the Berlinale at the Hackesche Höfe Kino in Mitte on February 13th.The evening will consist of three short films made by PhD students from the academy as well as a reel of shorts directed with by those studying the MA course. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session with Béla Tarr himself and the Academy manager, Ms. Emina Ganić.
In 2011 Béla Tarr won an honorary award for lifetime achievement at the Reykjacvik International film Festival in Iceland, shortly after which he announced that he would be giving up filmmaking for good. The New Yorker identified him as an ‘anthropological mythmaker’ on the basis of his (supposedly) last ever film, The Turin Horse (2011). Such high acclaim surely puts the young filmmakers being taught by a man who wants them to ‘use their creative powers in the defence of dignity of a man’ in good stead.
For further details, visit the Hackesche Höfe Kino website here.