FACETS CINÉMATHÈQUE

September 2006

The Facets Cinémathèque is located at 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. in Chicago. For more information on films playing in the Cinémathèque, please call 773-281-4114. To order advance tickets online, visit the TicketWeb website by clicking here.

Chicago Premiere
A SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT OF A MODERN-DAY
EPIC MASTERPIECE!

SÁTÁNTANGÓ

Shown in its entirety
(7 hours 30 mins., with two fifteen-minute intermissions)

"Devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours. I'd be glad to see it every year for the rest of my life."
-Susan Sontag

"Sátántangó has cast its spell on cineastes as varied as the late Susan Sontag and the rejuvenated Gus Van Sant. If you have a day to devote to it, the same might happen to you."
-Village Voice

Recommended! "Its 431-minute running time is necessary not because Tarr has so much to say, but because he wants to say it right. The experience afforded is one to cherish."
-Chicago Reader

"The people of this generation know information-cut, information-cut, information-cut. They can follow the logic of it, the logic of the story, but they don't follow the logic of life."
-Béla Tarr

Originally shown at the Facets Cinémathèque in 1996, and already legendary as cinema and event, Béla Tarr's seven-and-a-half-hour opus melancholia has been hailed as one of the most important films of the past two decades -- and as a definitive statement on the end of communism, an interim report on the state of humanity, and a prayer call for a society on the edge of collapse. The members of a rural farm collective eke out their days through a series of failed hopes, unsuccessful relationships, and all-too-successful drinking binges, often helplessly sharing screen time (and importance) with the various dog packs, cows herds, and cats that wander through the rain-drenched landscape. The film is divided into twelve chapters, and each episode, its camerawork and score, mimics the hypnotic languor of a tango: a slow step forward, a slow step back, then repeated, merging image and sound into a visual chant. Elaborately choreographed, paced to its striking fugue-like soundtrack and photographed in a series of astonishingly rich visual tableaux, Sátántangó paradoxically discovers a strange riveting motion in its characters' stasis, and a gorgeous beauty in its mud-drenched, toilet-of-the-world setting. "You can't read War and Peace in one sitting," Tarr has claimed in defense of the film's length; indeed, his mesmerizing recreation of an entire world, complete with all of this world's poetry, despair, horror, and humor (even amid the mud and the ennui, Sátántangó certainly boasts a gallows flair for the comedic) makes it not so much a film as a place to visit, or stay.

Directed by Béla Tarr, Hungary/Germany/Switzerland, 1994, 35mm, 450 mins. In Hungarian with English subtitles.

Kino-Eye on Tarr Kino-Eye: Tarr interview Senses of Cinema: Tarr interview

Author László Krasznahorkai site NY Times NY Times (2) Village Voice

Jonathan Rosenbaum on Tarr Chicago Reader

Showtimes:
Saturdays, Sept. 23 & 30 at 1:00 pm

Tickets:
$12.00 Special Admission fee for this unique presentation.
No passes of any kind will be accepted, although Patron Cirlce Membership privileges will remain intact.

For all Cinémathèque inquiries, contact Charles Coleman at 773.281.9075 or charles@facets.org