Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas wrote that a glance at the face of the Other is like a glance into Infinity. According to him, a face-to-face meeting enables a person to know the Other, but also retains the veil of mystery, which protects the otherness of the Other from us and from the wish to make the Other similar to us. But what is the relationship between the film audience and the Others seen on the screen?

Let us remember the faces seen on the screen. The close-up of a wrinkled face of a Moroccan woman in Šarūnas Bartas’ film Freedom (Laisvė, 2001), the smile given through massive effort by an African girl singing in a night club in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (2006), or the hopelessly sad eyes of Vanda Duarte in Pedro Costa’s Bones (Ossos, 1997). The list of memorable unnaturally long takes of faces is extensive. We can also remember amazingly long takes of persons in front of the camera, including the close look of the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman at the East Europeans stepping into a new period of history in the film From the East (d’Est, 1993), or unedited minutes of the mundane life of the residents of the failed collective farm in Béla Tarr’s Satantango (Sátántangó, 1994). In his article People Exposed, People as Extras (2009), Didi-Huberman maintains that bringing people back from the past is an ethical and political action reserved exclusively to cinematography. But how should this unique opportunity provided by the film be utilised? How should a person be filmed to reveal him or her without appropriating him or her? How should the gate of cinema be opened for the Other without closing it behind his or her back?

In the 1940s, the legendary French film critic André Bazin said that the use of the long take to portray a person is a ‘moral choice of a filmmaker’. All film directors make both aesthetical and ethical decisions. Béla Tarr’s films focus on raw faces of people who will never become leading or supporting actors in the mainstream cinema. It can be said that in Tarr’s films people faces are more than just building material for the cut of the story. The director gives the actors enough time in front of the camera. As the camera takes time to look into everyday lives of the characters, judgement is left for the audience. The specifity of portraying a person and the importance of aesthetical and ethical decisions made by the director will be addressed in a special IKFF discussion with legendary filmmaker Bela Tarr. The discussion will be moderated by film theorist Lukas Brašiškis.