For those who can't wait for the AE disc, the Hungarian version of The Man from London is currently available on Pirate Bay, this time sans oversized watermark. Picture quality was fine.

"Fine" = "much too dark". The Artificial Eye screener (presumably a sneak preview of the DVD transfer) was a (literal) revelation by comparison.

The differences are obvious right from the very first frame - in the pirate version (and the old watermarked screener) you can't even see that the ferry is tied to the shore by a rope, but this is a central part of the composition in the official Artificial Eye version. It was such an improvement visually that it was like watching the film for the first time again (just as well, given that I had to watch it again for professional reasons!)

Here's the pirate version:



And here's the AE screener:



I'm guessing that the pirate version was sourced from a theatrical print designed to be projected rather than telecined, while the AE screener was from a low-contrast print specifically designed for small-screen transfer.

You're certainly right Michael. I guess I meant "fine" as in "watchable". Glad to see the AE transfer is a marked improvement.

I think Grimfarrow reported a while back that when Tarr redid the soundtrack he also took the opportunity to alter the contrast on the film. It seems like a small detail, but it does make a big difference to the look of the film. I can't exactly compare like with like, since I've only seen the original version on a screener (an 'official' transfer and probable source for the pirate), but the multilingual version looked much less forbidding and more detailed with the softened contrast.

Yes, there's virtually no shadow detail on the Hungarian screeners, and that alone makes a huge difference. With a film like this, you really want to be able to see as much as possible given the amount of time Tarr gives you to let your eye roam the entire frame.

When is that AE DVD coming out?

Next year sometime, I imagine - the film's getting a single-screen theatrical release on December 12th (at the Renoir in London), but as mid-December is possibly the worst time of the year to open a film, they clearly aren't expecting it to break any records.

And here I was hoping it'd play in Ireland.

One screen in London after a year and a half of waiting...

Eighteen months' wait isn't too bad when you consider that Sátántangó didn't play theatrically in Britain until about seven years after it was made (and even that was a one-off weekend screening at the NFT), Damnation took something like fifteen years to get a theatrical release, and even Werckmeister Harmonies took about three. And the others never got British theatrical distribution - or distribution in any form, come to that.

Werckmeister took three years, yeah, but Tarr's star has risen so much in the interim I figured we'd see this within a year (it was originally supposed to come out in May). Even The Banishment beat it to UK screens, and the Cannes reception of that was pretty tepid too.

Anyhoo, Artificial Eye just informed me that the DVD is due out in late April, and also that the film will play at some point before then in the IFI. So, happy days.

Has anyone seen the French Clavis DVD release of Almanac of Fall? Looking at the comparison of this with the Facets release on DVD Beaver, it look like the Facets one is far superior. A surprise, to be sure.

A fantastic 80 minutes long interview (including several film clips) with Tarr has been posted at youtube. It's conducted by the critic Howard Feinstein, and I believe it is from 2007. I remember reading about this interview earlier, and had the impression it was a rather embarassing seance. But whenever Feinstein doesn't interfere, or try to give his opinion too much, it's actually really good. Be sure to switch to "high quality".

I always reckoned 'Damnation' to be as close to an Eastern European Jim Thompson as makes no difference: that wonderful ending isn't a million miles removed from Thompson's Masterpiece, Pop. 1280, so ever since I heard Tarr was making a film of a Simenon novel, I've been eagerly looking forward to it.
I can wait another three months or so: and I'll certainly check it out on the big screen first, if I can

Thanks for the link, but what an awful tribute by Rosenbaum. He's one of the film's premier acolytes, and he barely says a thing about it.

It almost seems as if he's been distracted in the middle of writing his article,...and never gone back to finish it
(perhaps because, a la Coleridge, he'd completely forgotten his train of thought!)

The excellent premiere issue of Unspoken, dedicated to Tarr.

Stolen from MichaelB's blog, but the Unspoken article written by our own Pacze Moj on 'Family Nest' couldn't be better timed as it's going to have a rare London screening in June, as part of the 2009 Check The Gate Festival.

Thanks for posting the link, JC. Unspoken has been a real labour of love for the esteemed Edwin Mak and the mysterious HarryTuttle, and I think it's come off extremely well. My contribution on "parametric narration" in Sátántangó was more than a little rushed & half-baked, but I hope people get something out of it. The other entries are pretty much uniformly superb.

Here's a little snippet about and construction pics from Turin Horse.

Rosenbaum again, this time on Almanac of Fall and Damnation. From 1990.

Don't know if this is the correct thread, but apparently The Turin Horse is finally done and cut.

That video, for those who don't speak French, was amongst the most depressing things I've heard in a while. The news of Hungary's newly elected nationalist government (and its slew of reactionary reforms, according to the video's director) is appalling; Tarr had helped mount a funding initiative for the completion of ten or so new features by young Hungarian filmmakers, only to see it disappear almost overnight. Elsewhere, the government seems to be outright banning access to jobs in the civil sector to those aren't Christians, while making life increasingly difficult for foreign residents (again, all this according to the narrator). Despite having completed The Turin Horse, Tarr confides that he is uncertain as to his future in Hungary, both as a citizen and a filmmaker, going so far as to claim that he'll have to drive taxis in he wants to stay put.

It'd be great to hear from those who know more about the current situation in Hungary, as I know next to nothing beyond the things I've heard in the video.

Bela Tarr wants to open a film school in Croatia.