Layla Alexander-Garrett's photo book Andrei Tarkovsky: A photo chronicle of making The Sacrifice is coming out in October. The presentation of the book will take place 23 October at the Film Festival Molodost', Kiev, Ukraine. See also our August 31, 2010 news update for a link to an exhibition of some of her photos.
We recently received the following press release from the UNIONgallery in the U.K.: "Two paintings inspired by the Andrei Tarkovsky film The Mirror are to be displayed at Union Gallery in Edinburgh during the month of August. Artist Philip Braham, a long-term admirer of Tarkovsky's work has produced two paintings in his new body of work, entitled Still, that are effectively an homage to the film. Braham has taken stills from the film and re-interpreted them to fit the theme of the exhibition: an examination of the influences that have helped to shape his life as a painter and as a man. Philip Braham is one of Scotland's great contemporary talents, working in the media of both paint and photography, and has a justifiable reputation as a major creative force, producing work that is visually stunning, challenging and demanding of the viewer, which fits well with the work of Tarkovsky. The paintings can be viewed at Union Gallery and online at www.uniongallery.co.uk. For more information, please contact the gallery at info@uniongallery.co.uk". Here is a direct link to Mr. Braham's work. His remarkable Tarkovsky related paintings are Antonine Hill, Oil on Canvas, 122x97cm, and Windyhill Woods, Oil on Canvas, 46x61cm. Dan Marquart, one of our site visitors, has recently started a blog of original drawings and comments inspired by Tarkovsky's films. We think you'll find them very interesting. Dan writes: "This is a non-commercial site. All my drawings can be right clicked and saved to your computer. I just want to share my admiration for Andrei Tarkovsky with other people who are inspired by him".
Gary has just posted his review of the Criterion Blu-ray Solaris. Looks absolutely stunning. Chris Marker's Tarkovsky meditation will be out on DVD in North America on May 24 (amazon link). Dmitry Trakovsky's film will be included on Artificial Eye's Tarkovsky Collection. Congrats, Dmitry! The collection will be available on May 23. Sean Martin's book on Tarkovsky has just been reissued in a much nicer format to the original 2006 edition. Better paper, better binding, and it now has colour photos. It's available in the UK now, and will be available in U.S. and Canada in July (amazon link). The Edward Artemiev soundtrack to Solaris can apparently be accessed here [mp3]. We prefer the uncompressed original CD and vinyl. The documentary Toscan: The French Touch looks interesting. Says the blurb: Daniel Toscan du Plantier produced over 50 films over the course of his career. He started in advertising and became Deputy Director of Gaumont in 1975, at the age of 35. During his ten-year tenure at Gaumont, he produced filmmakers Werner Herzog ("Nosferatu the Vampyre"), Federico Fellini ("The City of Women"), Ingmar Bergman ("Fanny and Alexander") and Andrei Tarkovsky ("Nostalghia"). New upcoming CD from the Tarkovsky Quartet (Francois Couturier, A Lechner, J-M Larche & J-L Ma) appears to be due out July 26, 2011 (amazon link). David Sylvian reciting the poem Life, Life by Arseny Tarkovsky, at the Concert For Japan.
The Details:
Please see the Director's notes [PDF] for more in-depth information on this adaptation. There is a Facebook page for the event. A PDF version of the event poster, with full cast listing, can be viewed here.
Interesting reflections by Danny Leigh over at the Grauniad, see "The powerful resonances of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker".
Fandor has a new piece, "How to Face a Nuclear Apocalypse: The Sacrifice", by Michael Joshua Rowin.
Geoff Dyer's next book to be on Stalker?
Efforts to open a Tarkovsky Museum in Moscow in 2011 are still ongoing, and ramping up.
There is a Tarkovsky retrospective being held at the Museum of Cinema in Moscow. It runs until April 11.
Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life interactive site is up.
Nice piece by Nicolas Rapold on the occasion of the upcoming Vigo event, "Son of Anarchy, Father of a Critic: A Tribute to Jean Vigo at UCLA". On Sunday at UCLA, the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute will honor Vigo with an award and a rare 35mm screening of his best-known works.
Michal Leszczylowski is not scared. See final paragraph of this USA Today piece.
The BFI just added a Tarkovsky slide to their excellent slide show.
The German DVD release of Nostalghia (from Alamode Filmdistribution) includes Dmitry's Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky documentary as bonus material. Juliette Binoche on The Sacrifice, here. Cate Blanchett on Stalker, here. Roderick Heath on Stalker, here. Filivs Macrocosmi has released an ambient music CD inspired by (and using sampled audio from) Stalker. As should be well-known by now (at least by followers of Criterion on Facebook and Twitter), the Criterion BluRay Edition of Solaris is slated for a May release. We are proud to tell you that the correction to the tint is more or less a direct result of our February 24, 2007 news update (scroll down). Also see this post. Our more observant readers point out that the release was actually hinted at back in January 2011. We sure had a hard time keeping our mouths shut about it back in late 2010. Mosfilm has released Andrei Rublev on BluRay. More information here and here. There is also a blurb over at blu-ray.com. Thanks, Adam Warren. (We haven't yet had the chance to study this release in detail). For a while, it looked as if The Sacrifice was being prepared by Kino for a BluRay release. Apparently plans have since been scrapped because "the 35mm low-contrast print we were using as our source had printed-in dust and dirt which was unsatisfactory to us." Yours truly (Trond) will be introducing a screening of Solaris at the Calgary Cinematheque in late April. Fascinating photo from LIFE Magazine, 7 April 1967, pp. 66–67. Does anyone have a better scan they can provide us with? Flickr album Inspired by Tarkovsky. Here is a CD re-issue of the Locklatar Swedish folk music record (used by Tarkovsky in The Sacrifice). There are a couple of extra tracks in addition to the original tracks, one of which is performed by Lena Willemark (ECM). It has a nice booklet too. The latest Lykke Li music video, directed by Tarik Saleh, has a familiar setting. Yes, that is Naersholmen, where The Sacrifice was shot. (Trond thanks his 19-year old daughter, Mary, a devoted Lykke Li fan of several years, for the tip). The Swedish book publisher Atrium continue their series of exciting Tarkovsky related releases (all in Swedish language). Their latest release, Apokalypsen som vision (The Apocalyps as Vision), is described in English, here. Atrium is now hard at work preparing the Tarkovsky Diaries for release. Intriguing: Beuys Meets Tarkowsky. Thanks, Gawan Fagard! Our friend Guy Maddin notes "My friend, Luce Vigo, daughter of legendary film director Jean Vigo (Zero for Conduct, L'Atalante), will be at UCLA on April 10 as part of an exhibition of Sergei Parajanov photographs. She will also be accepting the 2011 Parajanov-Vartanov Institute award and introducing the great films of her father for a rare LA screening." Another decade-long friend of ours, filmmaker and musician Keith Rose, has teamed up with vocalist Rebecca Reis-Miller and created an ambient album (direct digital download, CD and soon vinyl) called First Station. They call themselves The Drive to Uqbar, and their Facebook page is here. A documentary of the making of the album is found here. Fans of Barnett Newman and Andrei Tarkovsky might want to check it out. (Spontaneous idea: we'll send one of our screener copies of the excellent and/OAR release Antonioni: Trilogy and Epilogue to a randomly selected person who emails us pointing out at least two Tarkovsky references in the above mentioned documentary. This "contest" closes July 31.) A trailer for the latest (and apparently last) Bela Tarr film, The Turin Horse, is found here. The trailer for José Maria de Orbe's Father is found here.
Dr. Beachcombing has a piece on Stalker (among others) in his blog. See if you can help him out.
We've found a link to a new book, just published: Andrei Tarkovsky's Poetics of Cinema by Thomas Redwood.
We begin with two items about accessing some of Tarkovsky's works on the Internet:
The Swedish book publisher Atrium has initiated an ambitious publishing initative. During the time frame of 2009–2012, they intend to release several books pertaining to the life and works of Andrei Tarkovsky. Last year saw the release of a newly translated and edited Swedish edition of Sculpting in Time. In February of this year, Atrium released Offret, reproducing the original script as well as the final dialogue as it appeared in the film, along with articles of reflections and recollections by personnel who worked on the set of The Sacrifice. Nostalghia.com is proud to have played a small role in the production of these books. A book containing Tarkovsky's famous lecture on the Apocalypse is under preparation, and the Swedish Martyrolog is scheduled for an April 4, 2012 release. We recently received the following review from site visitor Sean O'Byrne:
Ian Christie celebrates Sergei Parajanov, one of our all-time favorite filmmakers, in this article. We are sad to report that Mikhail Vartanov passed away in December of last year. On February 5, 2010, a photography exhibition, I Will Wear Your Beret Papa, by Martiros Vartanov, in the memory of Paradjanov: The Last Spring helmer Mikhail Vartanov (1937-2009), opened at the XVI century Condestable Palace in Pamplona, Spain. It was organized by the Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival and the government of Navarra and featured Vartanov on the streets of Pamplona, and his meetings there with Andrei Tarkovsky's sister, Marina Tarkovskaya, Jean Vigo's daughter, the film critic Luce Vigo, and Russian filmmakers Aleksandr Gordon and Herz Frank at the 2007 Spanish premiere of Paradjanov: The Last Spring, which was part of the Dear Andrei retrospective of documentary films on Andrei Tarkovsky. February of this year saw the presentation of four of Tarkovsky's films in the Kunsthaus Graz' series Into the Night. A review of a new Czech DVD edition of Solaris is now up on Nostalghia.cz.
Happy New Year to all of our readers! Without further ado, here are some recent correspondence from site visitors. First, this from Prof. Norbert P. Franz of Universität Potsdam:
Dear sirs, in my lessons on Russian culture at Potsdam University I frequently consult the films of Andrej Tarkovskij. For the use in class I wrote protocols of some films and the protocol of Stalker together with translation of the dialogues and a postscript has now been published at Potsdam University Press as a conventional book [Stalker : UdSSR, 1980. Regie: Andrej Tarkovskij ; Protokoll des Films in der Original- und der deutschen Synchronfassung / Franz, Norbert P. (ed.). — Potsdam: Universitätsverlag. 2009. 130 p.], and as PDF: available here Best wishes, Prof. Dr. Norbert P. Franz Norbert.Franz[at]uni-potsdam.de Institut für Slavistik Universität Potsdam We received the following from Frank McGovern on December 21, 2009. Dear Sir This is to notify you of an event today 21st Dec 2009 in Kiev, Ukraine. Marina Tarkovskaya and her husband Alexander Gordon will give a talk at the Masterklass cultural Centre, 34 Ivana Mazepy St., Kiev at 19.00. I am an old friend of Marina's, author of a PhD dissertation on Tarkovsky (Oxford University) and Cultural Director of Masterklass and have invited Marina to Kiev in part to discuss a Tarkovsky festival we plan in April. There is already a lot of interest in this event from local media — Marina Arsenieva now rarely travels abroad. Hope you can mention the event on your site. Best wishes, Frank McGovern Next, an interesting note from Leonid Sokolov of Berlin: Hello, I am working on a Paper about Tarkovkys Mirror these days and your website has proved to be an exellent recource for all questions around Tarkovsky. Thank you for this! During my reserch I found a German Dissertation about Mirror, which I find to be very good, and, as it is from 2004, has a very recent bibliography. There is an abstract in English on the second page, so you can have a look and decide if this work would fit into the "Selected Bibliography" (I think the bibliography of this dissertation can serve a lot of interested people) Link to Dissertation Kind regards Leonid Sokolov 
Here is a tantalizing invitation from the Friends of Andrei Tarkovsky Society. Also, please support the Society by becoming a Member... membership form here.
James Macgillivray's Andrei Tarkovsky's Madonna del Parto has been translated into Czech. The article is located here, on our sister site, Nostalghia.cz. Layla Alexander Garrett's book Tarkovsky: The Collector of Dreams has been reviewed by Vera Liber of The East-West Review. Read the review here. Layla is currently organizing a Paradjanov festival in London and Bristol. Check out the festival website, paradjanov-festival.co.uk. A new edition of Sculpting in Time has been published in the Czech Republic. Another great publication from the hands of Milos Frys. More information here. Milos has also recently published a Czech translation of the Jim Jarmusch Interviews 1980-2000, originally published by University Press of Mississippi, 2001. Keep abreast of the latest news on Dmitry Trakovsky's documentary, here. Please support Dmitry's film... we have seen it, and it is an important piece of work. Join him on Facebook and Twitter for the latest news. There is another Andrei Tarkovsky screening series in Los Angeles in a few weeks. Full programme here. Dmitry Trakovsky's film is also being screened (congrats, D.!). Please consider joining The Andrei Tarkovsky Wave on Google Wave. If you need an invite to Google Wave, just drop us a note. Faithful site follower of 9 year, Keith Rose and his friend Clay Holliday have just completed their latest film, The Smallest Atom Stirs. Watch Parts 1 to 10, here.
There is an article in The Grauniad about the new documentary chronicling Rerberg's work on Stalker (see, e.g., our March 14 News update). As well, here is a link to the festival showing the documentary in the U.K. Thanks to Todd Ramsey for the links. There is is a special issue of Image & Narrative on the work of Chris Marker, with articles in French and English. Also see the article The Unknown Statue — A suppressed masterpiece by Alain Resnais and Chris Marker, by Jonathan Rosenbaum. The entertainment web site Review Fix has reviewed Andrei Rublev and Stalker. Check it out! Our colleagues over at Nostalghia.cz have posted a Czech translation of our article Andrei Tarkovsky's Madonna del Parto (by James Macgillivray).
My objective was to create an English language version of the dialogue in the film that was more nuanced and faithful to the sound score than the text provided in the subtitles. [...] The resulting translation is probably of greater interest to students or scholars of film than to casual viewers, however, I thought that there may be some who would find this translation interesting. We thank Vera for her brilliant contribution — you can find it in our Topics section or by following this link.
We haven't got any details on it yet but if you are interested, fnac have it available for 11.88 €. We are reposting here the latest news from the Institut Andreï Tarkovski in Paris, including an English translation this time (PDF document). You probably remember Dmitry Trakovsky and his new documentary Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky (shown recently at the Lincoln Center in New York). A video interview with Dmitry has been published by the FilmMaker magazine. Thanks to Keith Rose for the link!
Reid Rosefelt sent us this link to a very interesting article on his blog titled What Andrei Tarkovsky Said About Francis Coppola. (I wish I knew this story when I met Mr. Coppola a couple of weeks ago at the San Rafael Film Center! —JB). Fascinating stuff with a hilarious punchline and photograph. We couldn't resist: do you like "surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, psychotronic, and the just plain WEIRD" movies? Here is one by your favourite director.
There will be a press screening of Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, NYC, on the 25th, at 11 am. Interested members of the media may contact Dmitry Trakovsky for a press pass. Please consider supporting Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky. Funds are still needed for music rights, subtitling, and ancillary fees... Alva Noto: Tarkovski Revisited. There is reason to believe that some artworks claimed to be by Sergei Paradjanov maybe indeed be fakes. Please check this page on parajanov.com before considering purchasing a Paradjanov collage through any kind of auction, whether online or otherwise. In Moscow, Yury Samodurov, a human rights activist, and Andrey Erofeev, a museum curator, are facing criminal prosecution for organizing an exhibition entitled "Forbidden Art 2006" at the Andrei Sakharov Museum. The two men could be sentenced to up to five years imprisonment. The Tagansky District Court in Moscow is scheduled to resume hearing the case behind closed doors on June 5, 2009. You may join us in supporting Russian human rights activists by demanding that the charges be dropped.
The following is a sampling of some of the most interesting readers' letters we received over the last little while. Thanks to you all, for your interesting notes and always encouraging words. Hello, Many thanks for the excellent site. I can't find any mention on the site of an article in a recent edition of the London Review of Books about Tarkovsky so you might be interested to have the link which is www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n04/pere01_.html. All best wishes, Declan O' Driscoll. --- Hello, I just completed a master thesis about the spiritual connection between the German artist Joseph Beuys and Andrej Tarkowski, which is, as far as I know, a world premiere. I'm very pleased to present you a copy in pdf, which you can publish on the site if you want to, or simply link to it. But notice that I wrote it in Dutch, another beautiful European language. In English there's only a brief abstract available, until I find the money and the right person to translate it in English (so if one of your guys is interested in this job - feel free!) You can have a look at the work here: Main text: www.freewebs.com/gawano/MASTERPROEF_DEF.pdf. Abstract (Dutch and English)www.freewebs.com/gawano/ABSTRACT_NL_ENG.pdf. Image attachement:www.freewebs.com/gawano/MASTERPROEF_Afb. bijlage_DEFcomp.pdf. Here a brief abstract in English: Art towards an integral conciousness. A study based on the work of Joseph Beuys and Andrej Tarkovsky. "This research brings together the works of the German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) and the Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) both in a visual and philosophical fashion. As both artists refer to the spiritual catastrophe affecting mankind as a whole, the author investigates the extent to which this idea relates to the ancestral theme of the lost paradise. Throughout their endeavors, both artists give art a therapeutical connotation and strongly believe in its cathartic effect vis-à-vis the crisis of rationalism. This departs from the assumption that art is conceptually equivalent to an inner, divine capacity of creation, which allows men to control their own destiny and liberate themselves spiritually. This process is firmly grounded on an evolution towards a aperspective and integral conciousness which, according to the Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser (1905-1973), allows mankind to experience reality free of time and space relations. This expanded experience of reality results into a new imperative, defined as the free act of sacrifice. Beuys and Tarkovsky are aiming at a new way of a moral, responsible as well as ego-free spiritual acting, which allows mankind to reestablish his lost unity with the cosmos, overcoming the fundamental gap between the human being and his origin. The prophet-like position of both Beuys and Tarkovsky is understood as a process of desincarnation, pushing man towards a nearly absurdist way of acting, based on a radicalization of the artistic activity." By the way, I wanted to congratulate you with your marvellous website about Tarkovski and the other cinematic geniouses, it's really wonderfull work! As you can see I referred regularly to your site since the material published there was one af my main sources for primary material about Tarkovski. Sincerely yours, Gawan Fagard Free University Brussels, Belgium Avenue Adolphe Buyllaan 29 B - 1050 Brussel tel: +32(0)2/646 31 80 e-mail: gawan.fagard[at]projectb.be --- Hi Trond, again, thanks for keeping up Nostalghia and all your good work for MoC... About two years ago, I mailed you an article I wrote on historical echos in Andrei Rublev, but asked not to share it on the website, because I didn't get a permission from the publisher (they simply did not answer to my question...). But, luck is on your side: I by coincidence saw that it is fully available through Google books. As I told you before, I'm not happy about language and structure - if I rewrote it now, it would be different - but I think my points are made clear. Feel free to post the link at Nostalghia - and once more: thanks for sharing your love for fine movies (and helping us to get decent info and dvds...) [...] I also found a review that sums it up quite nicely: "Similarly, Pascal Vandelanoitte's essay, An Icon of Change: Andrei Rublev (1966) as a Historical Film about the Birth of Russia, also explores a film where historical background is unspoken, in the service of larger historical statements. The film itself is heavily laden with dates, characters, and events familiar to Russian audiences as cultural insiders but which fail to provide adequate context for cultural others, allowing history to remain a puzzle. As a result, Andrei Rublev has frequently been denied status as an historical film in Western circles. Vandelanoitte's work unpacks the film's historical content, in tandem with the painter's psychological conflict, in order to demonstrate Tarkovsky's use of Rublev's story as an allegory of broader social change in Russia, in the early 15th century." Reference: Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, March 2009. Yours sincerely, Pascal Vandelanoitte --- Dear Trond, It is with great sadness that I read of Oleg Yankovsky's death, especially as I spent this afternoon - before reading the news - watching him carry the candle again across the sulphur-baths at Bagno Vignoni. People visiting your site may find it very interesting that this significant scene from Tarkovsky's 'Nostalghia' appears in a video collage at an art exhibition called "Medium Religion" that just opened in Sligo, Ireland. The exhibition has just transferred from the ZKM / Center of Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany. It is curated by Boris Groys and Peter Weibel. Included in the exhibition is a video collage by Boris Groys, called "Religion as Medium". The collage includes the complete candle scene from 'Nostalghia' which is overlayed with a talk by Boris Groys. The full text of Groys' talk is published in the catalogue for the exhibition. Essentially, Groys suggests that the hero of Tarkovsky's film "finds himself in a state of a total lack of opinion". Groys says this in the context of his view that religion, in its sacred space, "marks and describes the state of opinionlessness." He says that people in this state practice repetition as "a ritual of the opinionlessness." To this extent, according to Groys, the "inescapable repetitiveness" of Tarkovsky's hero marks him as "a medium of this lack of opinion." At the opening of this exhibition, I chaired the talk and discussion with Boris Groys. I also spoke of Tarkovsky, in particular his comments on "the atrophy of the organ of belief" in Western man. (I attach this short talk for your interest and please feel free to include any part of this at your website if you find it relevant.) The exhibition "Medium Religion" runs from 23 May 2009 - 16 August 2009 at The Model Satellite, Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo, Ireland. [...] Currently I am reading a translation of Simeon Frank's Reality and Man, which Vadim Moroz, in his recent book, wrote was an important text for Tarkovsky. Certain sections, particularly on art and the artistic process, might have come directly from the mouth - or pen - of Andrei Tarkovsky. For example: "The artist, of course, creates 'of himself' - mere repetition of other people's ideas is not creativeness - but the creative 'self' is not simply the individual in his subjectivity, and not an impersonal bearer of consciousness in general: it is an individually-human embodiment of the super-human spirit acting in man." Or: "At bottom, however, every reality and every spiritual force (in so far as it acts through the centre of human personality and therefore is merged with man's creative freedom) issues from that centre and primary source of reality which we call God. ... It is as a creator that man is most conscious of himself as 'the image and likeness' of God. ... man as creator is a co-partner in God's creativeness." And: "Human spirit is a creative entity to which God as it were partly 'delegates' His own creative power, authorising it to be an active partner in His own creativeness." And too: "Man is not only the servant of God's creativeness. ... God has called man to be not simply His servant, but His free, i.e. creative co-worker." I am currently about two-thirds way through this often difficult text, but it gives quite an insight into the influences on Tarkovsky, particularly during the period of his last two films. The version of the book I have was published by Faber and Faber in 1965, and was translated by Natalie Duddington. All the best, Tony Tony Partridge, Sligo, Ireland.
Some fascinating information on a new HD transfer of The Sacrifice, here. There is an article on Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky at the always interesting bagatellen site. Also check out the trailer. The film will be fatured in July at New York's Lincoln Center. For running updates, follow on Twitter or log onto the official website.
Longtime site follower and contributor Eugene Borzov provided us with the following report from the annual Ivanovo "Andrey Tarkovsky Homage Days":
Dear Trond, I see that despite a huge amount of work in your office you still find time to make your great site move on. I'm sure all Tarkovsky's fans across the world do appreciate it. I'd be pleased if the following information on how Andrey Tarkovsky was remembered last week here in the land of his birth may contribute to your developments. On April 3, 2009 Shavkat Abdusalamov (worked as scenic artist in "Stalker" for some time) came to Ivanovo to talk about his cooperation with Tarkovsky in the late 70s. Vitaly Troyanovsky, Director of the "Isles" program on TV Channel "Kultura", spoke about his vision of "Ivan's Childhood" and introduced his documentary on Shavkat Abdusalamov. On April 4, 2009 all these guests visited Yurievets and participated in the Liturgy, dedicated to our great countryman and then in the opening of the photo exhibition "Stalker Again". Yet another exhibition of Tarkovsky's Polaroid pictures was displayed that day in a new gallery in Ivanovo. This project was initiated by the "Klassika" Association and the "Konsultant" company. About 60 pictures, made by Andrey Tarkovsky in the early 80s both in Russia and Italy were presented in a big screen digital format in the background of live music, performed by Yevgeny Borzov (piano) and Svetlana Kunitskaya(cello). This performance was followed by a multimedia presentation of the director's "Diaries" prepared by students of Ivanovo State University of Chemistry and Technology. Extracts from Tarkovsky's films, citations from his articles and books, as well as poems by Arseny Tarkovsky were included in this presentation. On April 5-6, 2009 the local audience could see two documentaries by Yevgeny Borzov "The Reflected Time" and "Magnetism of Memory", which concluded these Andrey Tarkovsky Homage Days. Please see some pictures of the events featured above in the attachment. Best wishes and a very Happy Easter, Eugene Borzov Ivanovo RUSSIA
"Mirror by Mirror" by Sergei Sviatchenko. A personal tribute to Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the greatest poets of cinematic art. Exhibition from 03. April - 25. May 2009 Photography - Collages - Installation The exhibition "Mirror by Mirror", as well as the publication accompanying it, take the film "The Mirror" by Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky as their starting point; a film that has strongly influenced the understanding of art and visual formation of Danish visual artist and architect Sergei Sviatchenko. Ukrainian born living and working in Denmark for more than 20 years, this exhibition traces a path back to the roots of Sviatchenkos visual training at the school of architecture in Karkov Ukraine. Since Sviatchenko's teenage years, Tarkovsky's profoundly poetic and dramatic pictorial universe has nourished Sviatchenko's art and philosophy of life. "Mirror by Mirror" crystallizes the essence of a never physically realized meeting between two artists, who, from their respective places in history, deal with images combining, at the same time, the distance of the imposing with the presence of the detail in urgently insistent and relevant attempts to comment on and describe the world, as well as the many physical and mental spaces that people enter throughout life. By mirroring his own work in Tarkovsky's, Sviatchenko stages his individual narrative as autonomous visual statements, borrowing from and referring to "The Mirror". In search of inspiration and as a preliminary to the exhibition "Mirror by Mirror", Sviatchenko went on a study tour to Moscow in June 2008. Receiving invaluable help from Irina Tchmyreva, curator and ph.D. in Art History, he got the chance to meet the author of a number of books on Andrei Tarkovsky: Tarkovsky's sister, Marina. She was deeply touched by Sergei Sviatchenko's visit, describing his art as both profoundly original and fully in accordance with the spirit of Andrei Tarkovsky: a striving towards the sublime and a particular sense of capturing and maintaining a momentary meeting between the conscious and the unconscious. Another major event for Sviatchenko in Moscow was his meeting with his former professor from the school of architecture in Kharkov, Victor Antonov, whose text on the meeting with Tarkovsky in the Soviet Union during the 80s is a special treat for the readers of the exhibition's extravagant catalogue. Laying the groundwork for the way in which the exhibition was created, the study tour is one of the reasons that "Mirror by Mirror" will be displayed in Russia. The exhibition is accompanied by a broadsheet catalogue in three languages composed of documentary film material from the shooting of "The Mirror" and Sviatchenko's graphic adaptation of this material. The catalogue presents texts by Marina Tarkovskaya, Irina Tchmyrva, Victor Antonov, Mark Le Fanu and Per Carlsen, Danish Ambassador to Russia. The publication is made of several types of paper, colours, sizes and different type fonts created by London based graphic designer James Greenhow. Furthermore, Marina Tarkovsky has helped select the collage works included in the exhibition and in the catalogue. His Excellency Mr. Teymuraz Ramishvili, Russian Ambassador to Denmark, and Marina Tarkovsky, author and sister of Andrei Tarkovsky, opened the exhibition in Arhus. Trine Rytter Andersen curated the exhibition in Arhus and is co-curator together with Gunther Dietrich in Berlin. The exhibition is kindly supported by the russian and danish embassies in Berlin. Vernisage: 03. April 6-9 pm Laudatio: Dr. Peter Funken, Berlin and Layla Alexander Garrett, London The musicpiece, Mirror by Mirror, from Arvo Paert will be performed during the opening. Interpret: Annette Wiegand PHOTO EDITION BERLIN, Ystaderstr. 14a, D- 10437 Berlin- Prenzlauer Berg Tel. 030 41717831 contact@photo-edition-berlin.com / www.photo-edition-berlin.com Curator: Gunther Dietrich
Further, the Intitute has announced a presentation of the audio programme Tarkovski, le son de la terre (see our December 29, 2002 update) on April 8, 2009. Here are the full details. We have an audio recording of this interesting radio program and highly recommend it (as well as the vodkas served after the presentation). We hope to some day obtain permission to post the mp3 file on our site... Please consider joining the Nostalghia.com community on facebook. The following announcement just in from the Virginia Commonwealth University:
The 205-minute version of Andrei Rublev will be showing at the New Beverly, Los Angeles, on April 5, 6, and 7. Thanks to David Sweetman for this update!
Here is a short clip from the new 2008 documentary by Igor Maiboroda titled "Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side of 'Stalker'. In this clip we are shown Isfara where the original Stalker was to be shot. An earthquake in the area prevented the crew from working there. The 140 mins. documentary focuses not only on "talking heads" (very interesting ones, incidentally) but tries to show the inner world and the artistic background of Georgi Rerberg, the cameraman that photographed Tarkovsky's Mirror and the first version of Stalker. This documentary has been criticised for being "anti-Tarkovsky" but we disagree: in our opinion it merely tries to show how important Rerberg's contributions were. This in no way takes anything away from Tarkovsky. The Austrian Film Museum (OeFM) is staging a Tarkovsky retrospective, March 4 to 25, 2009. Refer to their web site for additional details. As usual, their event poster is available for 7 Euros. There was a screening of Stalker at the National Film Theatre, London, on February 10, 2009. It is 28 years since Stalker was first shown in the U.K., at the NFT, when Tarkovsky himself was present on his first visit to the UK. (Apparently, a show of hands revealed that there were about half a dozen people in the packed auditorium who had been there on that night). The film was briefly introduced by Ian Christie. The screening was followed by a discussion with Evgeny Tsymbal and Anatol Lieven. The screening was co-sponsored by Academia Rossica (whose journal will be featuring Stalker in a future issue). See also Danger! High-radiation arthouse!, by Geoff Dyer (The Guardian). Programme notes, page 1 and page 2. Thanks to Tom Cheetham and Vils M. Disanto for contributing to this report. Some Ivan's related material here. Thanks to Patrick for the pointer.
There is a new essay called Andrei Tarkovsky: Truth Endorsed by Life available at
Senses of Cinema. The essay reflects on Tarkovsky's Solaris and Stalker,
in the light of the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset's reference to Man as a
"conscious cosmic phenomenon". Thanks to Conrad Steeves for the tip.
A collection of literary screenplays of some classic Mosfilm movies has been released by the Russian
publishing house Khudozhestvennaya Literatura (in Russian). One volume (ISBN 978-280-5-03455-6) is titled Zerkalo (Mirror) and includes the screenplay
of Tarkovsky's film of the same name. More information here.
Thanks to Eugene Starostin, UCL, London for this information.
Andrei Tarkovsky used several of his fathers poems in his movies. Alex Nemser and Nariman Skakov submitted to us new translations of all poems by Arsenii Tarkovsky appearing in Andrei's films. One of the poems appears here in translation for the first time.
Dmitry Trakovsky, director of Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky, sent us the
following note. We have seen the film, and we are convinced that a Tarkovsky documentary of great significance has been born. Please consider supporting this project.
The cemetery in which Tarkovsky was laid to rest,
Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Cemetery,
may now, sadly, be considered endangered. "Since the 1960s, the municipal authorities have periodically attempted to close the cemetery, claiming that the grounds are needed for public services. There have been reports that some of the graves will be opened and the exhumed remains cremated. As of 2006, the cemetery is not officially considered a landmark and has no legal protection." Please visit it while you can. Thanks to Michal Petricek for the pointer.
Site visitor Jeffrey Meyer sent us some interesting Tarkovsky-related artwork he recently made... see here.
More information on Jeremy Robinson's book The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky can be found here.
There is a new 8xDVD set out, containing a large collection of films by and about Andrei Tarkovsky. More information on this monumental DVD set from mk2 may be found here. We would appreciate
hearing from any of our readers who have had the chance to take a closer look at these DVDs.
Thanks to Benoît Robinet for the tip.
There is a new Italian 2xDVD release of Nostalghia out. We have no
details on the technical qualities (or lack of such), and would again appreciate
hearing from any of our readers who have had the chance to take a closer look at the DVD.
Petr, of our sister site Nostalghia.cz, wrote
this report after his visit to the location where The Sacrifice was shot. Also refer to our own humble
location guide before planning
next summer's vacation...
Frequent site visitor and contributor (and filmmaker) Keith Rose's music album Minus One is now out on iTunes. Here is an amazon link as well. We purchased the album, and (being fans of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Brian Eno, et al.) we loved it!
©2004 www.nostalghia.com
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Thursday, September 15, 2011
