Béla Tarr’s quest for cinematic perfection made him my ideal, impossible mentor | László Nemes

The Son of Saul director recalls how getting his first job as assistant to the austere master was a hard but inspiring lesson in the most ambitious kind of movie-making News: Hungarian director Béla Tarr dies aged 70 The last time I saw Béla Tarr was a few years ago at the Nexus conference in Amsterdam. We were invited to speak about the state of the world and of the arts. We both thought light and darkness existed in the world, even if our perception about them differed. Béla was already weakened in his body, but the spirit was still ferocious, rebellious, furious. We sat down to talk. It seemed fairly obvious this would be our ultimate, and most heartfelt, conversation. As the former apprentice, I was able to see the master one last time, with all his rage, sorrow, love and hate. I first met Béla in 2004 when he was preparing The Man from London. I wanted to learn film-making and applied to become an assistant on the film. He gave me my first real job: as an assistant, I had to fi...

Speak So I Can See You review – tuning in to a radio station’s soul

Documentary portrait of Radio Belgrade, one of Europe’s oldest broadcasters, threads together its scenes without commentary to hypnotic effect

The title is borrowed from Socrates, and signals the high-minded way of this oddly hypnotic documentary stroll through the corridors of Radio Belgrade. There is no voiceover, no talking heads, nothing to tell you that it is one of Europe’s oldest radio stations and a much-valued repository of culture and debate, or any other salient facts. But watching the public broadcaster’s technicians at work, listening to the stream of philosophical and political voiceovers is akin to hacking into a live transmission of the soul of a Balkan cultural institution.

Director Marija Stojnic opts for a completely freeform approach, collaging archival monologues over shots of presenters at work, techies setting up mics and adjusting oscillators, an orchestra making a tentative recording, a group photo session. Often, no one is there at all, and history seems to haunt these corridors and archives, impassively shot by cinematographer Dusan Grubin.

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