[OPIRG-EVENTS] Tarkovsky films start this weekend at National Archives- politically conscious cinema

[Mick Panesar <ybsapsucker@yahoo.com>]

The National Film Instite presents a retrospective of
the films of Russian ANDREI TARKOVSKY

http://www.cfi-icf.ca/tark.html
232-6727
All screenings at
395, rue Wellington Street
National Archives Auditorium
Archives nationales du canada
PLEASE NOTE: Due to the high importation costs of
bringing these restored prints to Ottawa, special
prices will apply for this series only (it’s still a
bargain!): CFI Members/Seniors/Students: $7.00;
General public: $10.00. The Tarkovsky Series Pass is
available to CFI Members for only $ 40.00 



Sat./sam June 28 juin, 19:00
Sat./sam June 28 juin, 21:00
 
IVAN’S CHILDHOOD
U.S.S.R. 1962, 95 min. 
“The most auspicious debut in Soviet cinema in the 35
years since Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike” 
(J. Hoberman, New York Times), Tarkovsky’s
breathtakingly lyrical first feature announced the
thematic preoccupations, visual motifs and aesthetic
strategies of one of the most visionary film artists
of our time. Praised by Jean-Paul Sartre as a work of
“Socialist surrealism”, and co-winner of the Golden
Lion at Venice in 1962, Ivan’s Childhood concerns a
12-year-old Russian war orphan whose zealous desire to
avenge the death of his parents spurs him on to
increasingly dangerous espionage missions behind
German lines. English sub-titles.

Sun./dim. June 29 juin, 19:00
 
SOLARIS 
U.S.S.R. 1972, 167 min. 
Based on a novel by the noted Polish writer Stanislaw
Lem, Tarkovsky’s Solaris is often described as the
Soviet 2001; the late Jay Scott of The Globe & Mail
once called it “Star Trek as written by Dostoevsky.”
The film’s plot has a troubled, guilt-ridden scientist
sent to investigate strange occurrences on a space
station orbiting Solaris, a mysterious planet with an
intelligent Ocean capable of penetrating the deepest
recesses of the subconscious. Confronted on his
arrival by the incarnation of a long-dead lover, the
protagonist is forced to relive the greatest moral
failures of his past. Solaris is magnificently mounted
in widescreen and colour, and offers a fascinating,
felicitous marriage between Tarkovsky’s characteristic
moral/metaphysical concerns and the popular format of
science fiction. “Solaris ranks with the best of
Tarkovsky’s work, which is to say it ranks with the
best movies produced at any time” Jay Scott. English
sub-titles.

Sat./sam. July 12 juillet, 19:00

ANDREI RUBLEV 
New 35mm fully restored print of director’s cut!
Ottawa premiere
U.S.S.R. 1966, 205 min.
Suppressed by the Soviet Union for over four years,
here shown in its full and complete verison for the
first time in Ottawa, ANDREI RUBLEV chronicles the
spiritual crises of a 15th Century icon painter deeply
troubled by the cruel, barbaric times he lives in.
Overtly anti-authoritarian, the film is a passionate
plea for artistic freedom. “Its greatness as movie
making immediately evident, Andrei Rublev was also the
most historically audacious Soviet production since
Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible” (J. Hoberman, Village
Voice). “Imperative viewing. It is a film of spiritual
power and epic grandeur, re-creating fifteenth-century
Russia with a vividness unmatched by any historical
film I can think of. It may be Tarkovsky’s greatest
work” (Philip French). “Towering . . . one of world
cinema’s most enthralling films” (Geoff Brown, London
Times). English sub-titles.

Sat./sam. July 5 juillet, 19:00
 
STALKER
U.S.S.R. 1979, 161 min.
In a devastated post-industrial police state, two men,
a writer and a scientist, engage the special mystic
skills of a Stalker to guide them through the
forbidden Zone, a damp, fecund, overgrown wasteland
where the rules of nature no longer apply. At the
centre of the Zone, it is reputed, is the Room, a
place where the deepest desires of one’s heart are
said to come true. The journey there will test the
limits of the way each of the three protagonists makes
sense of the world: through art, science, and faith.
Composed of stunning sepia images, and offering layer
upon layer of meaning, Stalker is a haunting and
unforgettable work. “A masterpiece . . . Not an easy
film, but most certainly a great one” (Jonathan
Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader). “As always, Tarkovsky
conjures images like you’ve never seen before” (Time
Out). English sub-titles.

Sun./dim. July 6 juillet, 19:00
 
THE SACRIFICE 
Sweden 1986, 145 min. 
Made in Sweden in Tarkovsky’s final year (he died
after the film’s completion of cancer at age 54), THE
SACRIFICE is a measured, compassionate view of
humanity at the edge of apocalypse. In a remote house
in the north, a family gathers and soon learns of an
impending, terrible war. Photographed by Bergman’s
cinematographer Sven Nykvist in ethereal northern
light, and opening and closing with two of cinema’s
most breathtaking single-take sequence shots, The
Sacrifice is a masterful, elegant film of great formal
rigour and intensity. Tarkovsky supervised its editing
from his hospital bed; he died in December 1986.
Profoundly pessimistic and yet profoundly hopeful, THE
SACRIFICE is a staggering achievement. English
sub-titles.

Sun./dim. July 13 juillet, 19:00
Sun./dim. July 13 juillet. 21:00
 
THE MIRROR 
U.S.S.R. 1974, 106 min.
A rarely seen, pivotal film in Tarkovsky’s career,
MIRROR presents a complex vision of the artist. The
story of a poet’s evolution (the film quotes
Tarkovsky’s father, the poet Alexei, extensively),
MIRROR’s extraordinary narrative travels between
conscious and subconscious, past and present. Sounding
echoes of Fellini’s 8 1/2, this modernist meditation
on the nature of perception is also the thematic
precursor to NOSTALGHIA. “An essential film, an
extraordinarily beautiful movie . . . What could top
Andrei Rublev except maybe The Mirror?” (J. Hoberman,
Village Voice). English sub-titles.

Sat./sam. July 26 juillet, 19:00
Sun./dim. July 27 juillet, 19:00
 
NOSTALGHIA
U.S.S.R./Italy 1983, 126 min. 
Exile, alienation, and frustrated vision inform this
tale of a Soviet writer in Italy researching the life
of a suicidal Russian poet. Stranded between worlds of
memory and desire, Tarkovsky’s protagonist struggles
to discover new modes of being, political and
personal. An eloquent, exquisitely melancholy film
made just before Tarkovsky’s own exile from the Soviet
Union. The film shared a special Grand Prize for
Creative Cinema with Bresson’s L’Argent at Cannes in
1983. “Extraordinary . . . Nostalghia is not so much a
movie as a place to inhabit for two hours. Tarkovsky
orchestrates a tortoise crawl tour through a world of
fantastic textures, sumptuously muted colours, and
terrarium-like humidity. This is a film that turns the
spectacle of an ancient, leaky cellar. . . into an
image as memorable as any this century” (J. Hoberman,
Village Voice). English sub-titles.

Sat./sam. July 26 juillet, 21:15
Sun./dim. July 27 juillet, 21:15
 
DIRECTED BY ANDREI TARKOVSKY 
Sweden 1988, 101 min. Director: Michal Leszczylokski
This illuminating documentary profile of the great
director at work on his last film was made by
Tarkovsky’s co-editor on The Sacrifice. “As
documentaries on filmmakers go, this is exemplary. The
late Russian director’s style and creative methods are
illustrated, respectively, by clips from The Sacrifice
and by shots of him on location in Sweden for that
film; rehearsing his actors, functioning as his own
camera operator during practice shots, discussing
points of design and lighting with ace lensman Sven
Nykvist, and perhaps most endearingly, in revealing
himself to be possessed by an easy sense of humour.”
(Geoff Andrew, Time Out). English sub-titles.



“Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who
invented a new language, true to the nature of film,
as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.”

Ingmar Bergman

For the first time since 1987, the Canadian Film
Institute presents a retrospective of all the feature
films of Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986). This
retrospective showcases the seven feature films made
by this visionary artist, and includes brand-new 35mm
prints of the first four: Ivan’s Childhood (1962),
Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), and The Mirror
(1974). Rublev will screen in a never-before-seen,
full-length, Director’s Cut version, which is 20
minutes longer than any ‘restored’ version previously
released in North America.

“Meditative, metaphysical, uncommonly lyrical,
remarkably textured, and incomparably visual,
Tarkovsky’s is a cinema of moral and spiritual
questing, of powerful apocalyptic poetry, of
tour-de-force long takes and tracking shots, of
expressive monochrome and muted colour, of
unforgettable images and dreamlike landscapes. Steeped
in Eastern Orthodox mysticism, abounding in elemental
symbolism, sometimes venturing forth into hauntingly
enigmatic science fiction, Tarkovsky’s films conjure
up an hermetic, hallucinatory world that often speaks,
forcefully, resonantly, mysteriously, more directly to
the subconscious than to the rational mind. The result
is cinema of the rarest order: transcendent,
transfixing and transformative, rigorous and
redemptive, utterly singular.” Jim Sinclair, Pacific
Cinematheque. 

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the high importation costs of
bringing these restored prints to Ottawa, special
prices will apply for this series only (it’s still a
bargain!): CFI Members/Seniors/Students: $7.00;
General public: $10.00. The Tarkovsky Series Pass is
available to CFI Members for only $ 40.00 



=====
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--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-1972, as quoted in the New Jersey Sierra Club's Newsletter, Sierra Activist, Vol. 3, No. 9 (October 1997).

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