As a filmmaker, you have to believe in the people - in their power - because if you do not believe in the people, then why do you make film... for what? Béla Tarr B: 1955 / N: Hungarian

Hungarian writer-director Béla Tarr plays 45pm genre film records at 33rpm speed. He uses cuts very sparingly, instead opting for sinuous sequence shots where his somnambulic camera slow-waltzes across, around and through a given space. Although Tarr's work may appear antithetical to the snappy 'genre' entertainments produced during Hollywood's Golden Age, he does co-opt the iconography and story structures of musicals, westerns and noirs, and then drags them into his own dismal microcosm of dive bars, boggy fields and desolate townships. Damnation (1987) is a classic film noir, but displaced to a run-down burg where the only true pleasure to be had is watching a torch singer at the local pub. It has the femme fatale, the tragic patsy, the scheme that goes wrong and the downer ending, but these elements are presented to emphasize the crushing duration of dead-end boredom. The artful expression of torpor, done in a way that is utterly compelling despite its testing duration, is Tarr's stock in trade, and the ne plus ultra of his project is 1994's seven-hour magnum opus Sátántangó (Satan's Tango). This includes a famous scene in which a young girl plays with a cat and becomes ever more aggressive with it. Tarr will not allow you to look away while the scene runs on and on. He pushes the idea that cinema has the ability to imprison you in a moment, and the director gets to decide the length of your sentence.