Béla Tarr

[on Le cheval de Turin (2011)] You are doing always the same thing every day, but every day is a little bit different, and the life is just getting weaker and weaker, and, by the end, disappears. This is what this movie shows you. Show less «

On why he likes long takes: You know I like the continuity, because you have a special tension. Everybody is much more concentrated than when you have these short takes. And I like very much to build things, to conceive the scenes, how we can turn around somebody, you know, all the movements implied in these shots. It's like a play, and how we can tell something, tell something about life...Because it's very important to make the film a real psychological process. Show less «

I don't care about stories. I never did. Every story is the same. We have no new stories. We're just repeating the same ones. I really don't think, when you do a movie that you have to think about the story. The film isn't the story. It's mostly picture, sound, a lot of emotions. The stories are just covering something. Show less «

Without light in the darkness you cannot make movies.

[on evolution of his style] At the beginning of my career, I had a lot of social anger. I just wanted to tell you how fu..ed up the society is. This was the beginning. Afterwards, I began to understand that the problems were not only social; they are deeper. I thought they were only ontological. It's so, so complicated, and when I understood more and more, when I went closer to the people... afterward, I could understand that the problems were not only ontological. They were cosmic. The whole fu..ed up world is over. That's what I had to understand, and that's why the style has moved. Once I went down, I kept going down. The style became more and more downward, by the end, becoming more simple, very pure. That's what was interesting for me, to discover something step by step. Show less «

[on why he likes long takes]: You know I like the continuity, because you have a special tension. Everybody is much more concentrated than when you have these short takes. And I like very much to build things, to conceive the scenes, how we can turn around somebody, you know, all the movements implied in these shots. It's like a play, and how we can tell something, tell something about life...Because it's very important to make the film a real psychological process. Show less «

I have nothing to do with the filming community in Budapest. They don't like me, because I don't make conventional films. I can't talk with them about films, because I live and think differently than them. They are film makers and I am not. I don't know what I am. Show less «

If you are a real filmmaker you have to have your own style, your own language. Which is depending on your cultural background, your history, and your budget of course, and a lot of things what you already have. Because as I see, what I think, filmmaking is a kind of reaction to the world-you're just telling people how you see the world, from your point of view of course. But, you know, that's the reason why I do not listen for the other circumstances, what the other people are doing-because it's impossible to follow someone, impossible to say OK this is a trend, or what we would like to keep it or-it's definitely fake, wrong way. You have to be yourself, you have to tell everything from your side and you do have to have your own language; and if you have your own language you don't care about the world and anything really and that's what I feel, what I learned during these 34 years. Show less «

[on why he retired] A filmmaker is a nice bourgeois job. But I really don't want to do it. I'm not a real filmmaker. I've always been in it for the people and just wanted to say something about their lives. During these 34 years of filmmaking, I've said everything I want to say. I can repeat it, I can do a hundred things, but I really don't want to bore you. I really don't want to copy my films. That's all. Show less «