A nod and farewell to master Hungarian auteur, Bela Tarr (July 21st 1955 to January 6th 2026) who brought the barbiturate art of “slow cinema” to a whole other level of gravity and existential molasses. His seven-and-a-half hour magnum opus Satantango is a textural tapestry of meditatively long takes, gallows humor, moral dubiousness and desperation implicating an all-too-human cast of characters, and an uncompromising invitation into a somnambulistic realm of folly, futility and grace. And his filming of rain and mud were like eloquent tributes to the weather gods themselves. Tarr, with iconoclastic vision and singularity, extended the language of cinema and broadened the context of what it means to witness and immerse oneself in film as guest and audience.
John Biscello 