"Andrei Tarkovsky Today. Berlin Meetings" - A conversation between Alexander Smolyansky and film critic Andrei Plakhov.
Andrei Tarkovsky has been dead for almost forty years, but his authority as the most uncompromising author, the magic of his works and personality, and his influence on his contemporaries are phenomenal.
Russians Alexander Sokurov and Andrei Zvyagintsev, Turks Nure Bilge Ceylan, Mexican Carlos Reygadas, Americans Paul Schrader and Steven Soderbergh, each in his own way, develop Tarkovsky's artistic ideas
Tarkovsky is a vast planet, touching the orbits of Antonioni and Fellini, Bergman and Parajanov, Bresson and Truffaut. "Why am I not Tarkovsky?" - is the title of one young Turkish director's debut, and he is not alone in this question. He is being addressed by a great many directors.
This evening, Andrei Plakhov and I will discuss not only "what it was", but also "what it means today".
Here are just a few questions, the discussion of which we will illustrate with excerpts from Tarkovsky's films:
- How would Tarkovsky have behaved - and what kind of films would he have made - had he lived to see the present day?
- Whose side would he be on now?
- Are his prophecies coming true - and what exactly do we take for prophecies?
- Does he have any legitimate heirs in today's cinema?
- What in Russian culture has led to the current barbarism and soullessness?
- Where is the line between high style and moral blindness?
- Tarkovsky always considered Russia to be part of European culture. Would he continue to think so today, when today's Russia opposes not only Europe, but European civilization itself?
- Did Tarkovsky invent his own myth about Russia and how does his myth correlate with the myth that the Russian authorities are planting today?
- Was Tarkovsky a patriot of a real country or did he believe only in an ideal Russia created by his imagination?
- How would Tarkovsky feel about the collapse of European Enlightenment ideas in modern Russia, about the anthropological catastrophe of a century ago, whose consequences we are witnessing today?
The occasion for the conversation will be Andrei Plakhov's new book "Tarkovsky and Us" - both a partially selected history of cinema and a memoir of collective memory, a personal experience of immersion in his world.
Those who wish will be able to purchase the book and have it signed by the author.
Come. Let's see what else cinema can do - and what else we can do.
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