Bela Tarr’s Sátántangó

Sunday, October 29 at 1pm (Entire film with two 30-minute intermissions)
Wednesday, November 1 at 7pm (Part 1)
Thursday, November 2 at 7pm (Part 2)

Advance Reservations Recommended / No refunds
Members $8 / Public $12

“Devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours. I'd be glad to see it every year.” - Susan Sontag

Visionary filmmaker Bela Tarr’s 7½-hour epic Sátánangó is one of the towering works of modern cinema. In starkly beautiful black and white images, Tarr traces the disintegration of a Hungarian collective farm during the fall of Communism. All of the farm’s inhabitants sense that the end is near, several are scheming to steal the organization’s meager reserves, but everyone is frozen into immobility by news of the return of their charismatic leader, Irimiás (Mihály Vig, who also composed the film’s mesmerizing musical score). A trickster and false messiah, Irimiás lures them with dreams of wealth and freedom that they cannot resist. However, plot is only one element of the vivid experience that is Sátántangó. Taking advantage of the film’s unusual length, Tarr plunges us into the landscape and existence of these people in lengthy extended sequences that reveal both the sharp reality of their lives and the cosmic forces that drive them irrevocably forward. Tarr’s early films leaned towards John Cassavetes-style realism. Everything changed when he began to collaborate with the brilliant Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai. In Tarr’s subsequent films, Damnation, Sátántangó, and Werckmeister Harmonies, he perfected a poetic style that stunningly balances realism with a larger vision of the universe and our unstable place within it. Unlike other lengthy films that were made for television and subsequently just happened to play in theaters, Sátántangó is a deeply cinematic work that demands, and was only intended, to be seen on the large screen. Because of its length, Sátántangó is not frequently screened. Don’t miss this rare chance to see one of the landmark works of recent film history. –Dylan Skolnick

Hungary/Germany/Switzerland, 1994, 450min., b/w, in Hungarian with English subtitles • Director: Béla Tarr • Writer: Béla Tarr, based on the novel by László Krasznahorkai • Cast: Mihály Vig, Putyi Horváth, László Lugossy