The Cinema of Béla Tarr: Architectonics of Time, Movement and Hapticity

Khalili, Hamid ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2547-6537 (2025) The Cinema of Béla Tarr: Architectonics of Time, Movement and Hapticity. Architectural Theory Review. ISSN 1326-4826

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Abstract

The article delves into the architectonic cinema of Hungarian director Béla Tarr, an exemplar of “slow cinema.” It constructs a theoretical framework integrating the theories of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Rancière, Elie During, and Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, alongside discussions by architectural theorists Michael Tawa, Giuliana Bruno, François Penz, and film theorists Sergei Eisenstein, Béla Balázs, André Bazin, and David Bordwell. Supported by original material, including a nine-hour unpublished interview with Tarr and his set designer László Rajk, and an archival study of Sergei Eisenstein’s notes at the Gosfilmofond archive, the study addresses contemporary issues in spatial and architectural filmmaking and film-architecture literature. Through a close examination of Tarr’s long takes, it explores the intricate interconnectedness of time and spatiality in cinema, the importance of movement in its architectonics and the notion of tactility in Tarr’s work. It traces historical cross-disciplinary parallels between “montage” in modernist architectural theories, Eisenstein's ideas, and Tarr’s cinema.