Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky : April 4, 1932 - December 29, 1986
After training for over five years at the VGIK film school, Tarkovsky started film making through the Soviet Mosfilm studio system, which enabled him to make films that would not have been commercially viable in the West. However the Orthodox Christian symbolism in them often led to interference and occasionally suppression by the Soviet authorities. In 1984, after shooting Nostalghia in Italy, he decided not to return to Russia. He made only one more film, The Sacrifice, before dying of cancer in the suburb of Paris at the age of 54.
Tarkovsky developed a theory of cinema that he called "sculpting in time". By using long takes and few cuts in his films, he aimed to give the viewers a sense of time passing, time lost, and the relationship of one moment in time to another.
He developped this to include the notion of 'a concentrated action', events happening in one place, within the span of a single day. His film Stalker is, by his own words, the only film that truly reflects this ambition; it is also considered by many to be a near-perfect reflection of the sculpting in time theory.
After training for over five years at the VGIK film school, Tarkovsky started film making through the Soviet Mosfilm studio system, which enabled him to make films that would not have been commercially viable in the West. However the Orthodox Christian symbolism in them often led to interference and occasionally suppression by the Soviet authorities. In 1984, after shooting Nostalghia in Italy, he decided not to return to Russia. He made only one more film, The Sacrifice, before dying of cancer in the suburb of Paris at the age of 54.
Tarkovsky developed a theory of cinema that he called "sculpting in time". By using long takes and few cuts in his films, he aimed to give the viewers a sense of time passing, time lost, and the relationship of one moment in time to another.
He developped this to include the notion of 'a concentrated action', events happening in one place, within the span of a single day. His film Stalker is, by his own words, the only film that truly reflects this ambition; it is also considered by many to be a near-perfect reflection of the sculpting in time theory.
From mugnum.
