It’s been six years six Hungarian arthouse fave Béla Tarr has directed a full-length film, and if you’re waiting for a new feature from the director, don’t hold your breath. Following 2011’s “The Turin Horse,” Tarr focused his energies on teaching and other artistic projects, and while he has helmed two shorts as part of an art exhibition on display in Amsterdam, the man who forged the slow (very, very slow)-cinema movement doesn’t think he has anything left to say in the cinematic medium, and isn’t planning on directing any more films.
“I was developing my own language, my film language. I went deeper and deeper…with ‘The Turin Horse,’ I arrived at the point where the work is complete, the language is done,” Tarr explained to Screen Daily. “I don’t want to use my film language for repeating something….I don’t want to be boring.
“[It’s] done, ready, packed. Take it or leave it,” he added about his film career.
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Instead of worrying about repeating himself, Tarr is turning his creative energies to the opera and theater. However, he has plenty of opinions, and as a teacher, lots of advice to give up-and-coming filmmakers, the foremost of which is: be original.
“[Young filmmakers] have to be brave. In the 21st Century, when you can do a film with your phone, there are no more rules…my advice is please be yourself, strong enough, brave enough and don’t care about anything. Just show the world how you see. That is all I can say, nothing more,” he said.
So it looks like Tarr’s cinematic career is over. But you can never can tell these days. Maybe one day he’ll return and surprise us all by directing a perfume commercial.