Leading film director Béla Tarr lead the Excecution Workshop for FAMU students in master’s and doctoral programme from October to December 2023. This is the first time an internationally renowned filmmaker came to FAMU for such a long time as part of the school’s mentoring programme. Students of Prague’s Film and TV School consulted with a prominent personality of global cinema on dramaturgy and script structure, narration, building dramatic situations, and various methods for presenting reality. He participated in their film shootings and at the end of the Execution Workshop the film screening took place.
As part of the Execution Workshop, Béla Tarr selected for the students and personally presented in the Studio FAMU Reference Screening Room the screenings of Sitting Elephant - the dark melancholic debut of the promising Chinese director Hu Bo and Reiner Werner Fassbinder's unusual gangster story Love is colder than death.
In several departments, students and teachers met with the director and discussed together about film and art.
Prominent Hungarian director and scriptwriter Béla Tarr is one of the most influential current filmmakers. His films such as The Turin Horse (2011), The Man from London (2007, starring Miroslav Krobot) an Satantango (1994) made history of global cinema, were screened all over the world and achieved success including the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Berlinale, a nomination for the Gold Palm in Cannes, and the European Film Awards. Tarr’s work is diverse in terms of genres – he applies his approach to cinema through means of expression employed in both documentaries and singularly styled apocalyptic films that explore visions of the current world.
On 31 October, Béla Tarr received honorary doctorate from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, the greatest appreciation of the life and work that our university bestows alongside being named Professor (by the president of the country). AMU bestowed its first ever honorary doctorate on Václav Havel in 1996. Over the course of 27 years, 19 internationally recognised artists received the honorary degree, many of them former AMU students, including Miloš Forman, Jan Švankmajer and Agniezska Holland.
Several interviews with the director have been published: he was a guest on ArtZona (here), he spoke with Martin Svoboda for Kinobox (here), Magdalena Matoušková (here), Jindřiška Bláhová for Respekt (here) and Zbyněk Vlasák and Klára Vlasáková for Právo (here).
This project AMU, Execution Workshop - Béla Tarr, registration number of the project 0311000024, is implemented with the financial support of the European Union through the National Recovery Plan and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
Photo: Zuzana Lazarová, Anna Černická, Louisa Havránková, Arthur Maurer, Andrea Petrovičová