08 · 21 · 13

Studying at Film Factory. Part 1: Under the Tutelage of Béla Tarr

Sergio Thor Flores (@ThorSFT)

Béla Tarr is a very important person in my life. For many years, I’ve been following his filmography and I admire how, little by little, he has reinvented a great part of the cinematic endeavor. For a while I’ve considered him to be the best director in the world and now I have the good fortune to share each day with him.

Our friendship began with an email that he sent me eight months ago. In it he told me that he liked my short films very much and welcomed me to the doctoral program called Film Factory in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Of course, I dropped everything I was doing, I celebrated like crazy, and one month later I was on a flight to Sarajevo.

In this space, which the Morelia International Film Festival has provided, I’d like to share with you some of my experiences next to Béla. On many occasions, we believe that these filmmakers are almost mythical beings and therefore I’ve decided to talk a little bit about his more personal side and the great human being he is.

First of all, I’d like to start by paying tribute to Béla’s great initiative in founding Film Factory. He developed the entire school with the goal of transmitting the knowledge that he has acquired throughout his life and of supporting new filmmakers at the beginning of their careers. Béla planned the classes, invited the teachers and chose Sarajevo as the site for the doctoral program. I dare say that in all the artistic disciplines there is no other school like Film Factory. This semester I had the privilege of taking classes given by Gus Van Sant, Fred Kelemen, Tilda Swinton and our compatriot Carlos Reygadas. All this is thanks to the initiative of the great Béla and his desire to help young people. He told me that when he first began his career he did not receive any support, and that is something he did not want to see repeated. In a nutshell, Béla believes that his legacy is not only in his films, but also in supporting new filmmakers in the most complicated part of their careers.

Coupled with this, Béla is a person who is 100 percent committed to his cause and the engine that sustains Film Factory. Every day he is the first to arrive and we have several individual meetings a week in order to develop our projects under his supervision. Béla pressures you continually and he forces you to defend the smallest detail of your future films. However, he also supports you in everything that you need and is concerned 24 hours a day that we are happy in our personal lives. Suffice it to mention that just a few days ago he received recognition for his film career at the Sarajevo Film Festival and in his speech he decided to ask for even more support for each one of us.

On the other hand, I’d like to tell you about the talks that Béla gives us once in a while. As I said, Béla prefers personalized meetings rather than group classes. However, sometimes he gives in and speaks to us about his films. For example, a few weeks ago he gave us a lecture on Satantango that lasted an entire day. In these classes, he explains how he took each shot and analyzes the reason behind everything that happens on the screen in reference to the rest of the drama of the film. However, there is one element that Béla stresses above any kind of conceptualization. By this I mean he always emphasizes that the aim of film is to talk about a situation that is truly human.

In conclusion, I’d like to mention that after knowing Béla during all these months, I think he is a director who is misinterpreted by the majority of the public. Béla is internationally praised for his technical quality and for his ability to move the camera. However, Béla’s films are a faithful reflection of what he’s like in daily life. The poetry in his cinema is generated by human emotions, and the sequence shots, for which he is so well known, are a simple support so that situations flow with more realism. In the same way, the only thing Béla wants with Film Factory is to help new filmmakers, with the goal of increasing the number of people who are able to get excited about the art that he loves so much.

In future articles, I’d like to talk about my experiences with the great Carlos Reygadas, Gus Van Sant, Tilda Swinton, among others. However, on this occasion, I wanted you to know a little more about Béla and because I feel so honored to call him my friend.