Showtimes
Sunday, May 18
3:00pm
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$12 /Single Ticket
$45 /Series Pass
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Did you know FACETS helped introduce North America to the enigmatic Hungarian director Béla Tarr? Come watch his mid-career masterwork Damnation (1988) and talk about it with film critic Johnathan Rosenbaum.
Béla Tarr is now upheld as one of the best European directors in contemporary cinema. But back in the late 1980s, he had little to no reputation in the United States due to lack of distribution. FACETS sought to reverse this trend by releasing nearly all of Tarr’s features on DVD for this first time in North America (including his 7+ hour epic, Sátántangó), exhibiting his work (including a private screening for writer Susan Sontag), and bringing him to Chicago for a retrospective and symposium in 2007.
The release of Damnation in 1988, not only marks Tarr’s departure from realist dramas, but was an inflexion point for U.S. film critics like our guest Jonathan Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum discovered Damnation in 1989, shortly before seeing Tarr’s Almanac of Fall (1984) at FACETS, and quickly became a devoted follower and champion of Tarr’s work. In his Chicago Reader review of Damnation, Rosenbaum cuts to the heart of Tarr’s rain-soaked atmosphere-first aesthetic: “The near miracle is that something so compulsively watchable can be made out of a setting and society that seem so depressive and petrified.”
Join FACETS Film Program Director, Charles Coleman, and film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, to watch and talk about the 4K restoration of Béla Tarr’s Damnation.
FILM SYNOPSIS
Bar Titanik regular Karrer (Sátántangó’s Miklós B. Székely) pines endlessly for cruel and bewitching cabaret singer (Vali Kerekes), but when his schemes to displace her brutish husband (György Cserhalmi) fail, things quickly spiral out of control. A mid-career masterwork by legendary Hungarian art house auteur Béla Tarr, Damnation has been restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative.
In Hungarian with English subtitles.
Béla Tarr, Hungary, 1988, DCP, 116 mins.
IN CONVERSATON
After the screening, legendary film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum joins FACETS Film Program Director Charles Coleman to discuss the historical and cultural impact of Damnation, with a brief audience Q&A.
Jonathan Rosenbaum – Critic
Jonathan Rosenbaum is a Chicago film critic and author of over 15 books on cinema, including his most recent In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: A Jonathan Rosenbaum Reader (2024). Rosenbaum was the head film critic for The Chicago Reader from 1987-2008, and has published with notable film publications, Cahiers du cinéma and Film Comment.
Charles Coleman – Host
Charles Coleman is FACETS Film Program Director and has more than twenty years of experience in programming. He has taught film courses at the University of Chicago and given lectures at the Chicago Public Library and the Art Institute. He is responsible for bringing to Chicago rare, one-of-a-kind screenings that range from retrospectives of acclaimed filmmakers to the most recent films by up-and-coming directors.
5 FILMS/5 DECADES/5 CRITICS
A new FACETS’ 50th Anniversary series curated by Charles Coleman and hosted by local film critics, “5 Films/5 Decades/5 Critics” digs through our 50-year history to present bold arthouse and independent gems that we’ve discovered and championed over the years.
