So, certainly, things have changed. And there is a lot to do. The next century is right on us. Policemen need to give up their guns. Society needs to dismantle all our prisons. If we need to detain people, a local jail should be sufficient. We need many more doctors; we need many more social workers; we need lots more teachers. And, yes, a lawyer or two to keep the stew honest. We need to be proud of the taxes we pay. We need to tax the wealthy dead at 100 percent. It’s an abomination that the dead rich control ‘their’ money while the living must suffer. We need a new definition of neighbourhood, community, society. We need to make white America tell us why they hate and fear and hoard. We need a new definition of life so that we can find a truer definition of death. We all need a definition of responsibility. And I don’t think there is any one key or easy answer. There are some clearer answers and some difficult decisions but our first decision must be to change from the rather hateful, selfish species we are into something a bit better. I hope there are aliens out there and I hope they come to Earth. We need another perspective on the possibilities. Civil Rights have to somehow be tied to civilized humans. So that is the question: What is a civil human?
From a “Civil Rights Journey”, by Nikki Giovanni, Blues: For All the Changes (1999)
For Béla Tarr (1955-2026)
“I still consider myself an anarchist. But there’s an old saying, that goes, “If you’re not a communist by 30, you have no heart. But if you’re a communist after 30, you have no brain.” This is quite an old maxim, with which I don’t always agree with, because I think that social sensitivity is a really important aspect. You can’t be cynical, you can’t be cold-hearted. You can’t do anything without empathy. And it’s obvious that one has to side with the poor, the disgraced and the tormented. This is a moral duty, and not a question of profession, nor a question of your social status. This is simply a question of honour.”
Béla Tarr, “Kozmikus a szar” | életútinterjú Tarr Bélával [interview with English subtitles with Béla Tarr], Partizán, 24 March 2023, (via YouTube).
“My slogan is very, very simple: no education – just liberation!”
Béla Tarr, The Guardian, 19/07/2024
If Béla Tarr’s “slogan” is first a reference to his hope for young filmmakers, that they break away from the weight of cinematographic traditions and find their own forms of expression, it may be taken more broadly as a call to break away from something more profound: from stories with a “perceptive centre”, for “the filmmaker is not there to make himself the center that arranges the visible and its sense.” (Jacques Rancière, The Time After, 2011)
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