Rob Tregenza Movies

Bela Tarr follows up on his seven-hour epic Satantango, considered by some critics as one of the finest films of the 1990s, with this elegant, haunting work about the cycles of violence that have dogged Eastern European history. Jancos (Lars Rudolph) is a wide-eyed innocent who works as an occasional postal worker and as a caretaker for Mr. Ezster (Peter Fitz). An outsider and a visionary, he marvels at the miracles of creation, from the planets rotating in the heavens to the sundry animals on earth. One day, a circus featuring jars full of medical anomalies and a massive dead whale entombed in a corrugated metal trailer visits Jancos' economically depressed village. Another more sinister attraction is a shadowy figure dubbed "The Prince," whose nihilist rants incite the town's disaffected to riot. Not long afterwards, Mrs. Ezster (Hanna Schygulla) cajoles her estranged husband to join a citizen's action group against the circus, threatening to move back into his house if he doesn't play along. Tension in the town builds until, after one of The Prince's hate-filled speeches, throngs of angry men with blunt instruments ransack and brutalize a men's hospital ward. When the dust clears, lives are irrevocably changed. This film was screened at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

American independent filmmaker Rob Tregenza, who includes Jean-Luc Godard among his admirers, directed this deliberately paced, minimalist drama about Jean Hammett (Frederic Pierrot), a French artist who has been committed to a mental institution in the United States. One of the female inmates becomes infatuated with him as the patients react with the nuns who run the hospital and attempt to interact despite the emotional distance between them. Tregenza, who also wrote, produced, and photographed Inside/Out, shot the film in the widescreen CinemaScope format to better visually illustrate the separation of the characters. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

An aspiring writer wanders through a city looking for inspiration. Over the course of a day, he has nine distinct encounters. Each encounter was filmed by first time director/cinematographer/screenwriter Rob Tregenza in one uninterrupted and unedited 10 minute take. He later spliced the episodes together at random, so the time frames are fluid and there is no sense of traditional narrative. Only the writer provides continuity. Each segment is given a title and has a unique setting. While the quality of the mini-stories is uneven, the most arresting thing about the film is Tregenza's inventive camera work; this is especially true in "The Soup Kitchen" scene. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide