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Andrei Tarkovsky
Birth name	Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky
Born	April 4, 1932(1932-04-04) Zavrazhye, Soviet Union
Died	December 29, 1986 (aged 54) Paris, France
Resting place	Cimetière de Liers, Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, France
Occupation	Film director
Years active	1958-1986
Spouse(s)	Irma Raush (1957-1970) Larissa Kizilova (1970-1986)
Children	Arseny Tarkovsky (1962) Andrei Tarkovsky Jr. (1970)
Parents	Arseny Tarkovsky Maria Vishnyakova
Awards BAFTA Awards Best Foreign Film 1988 Offret

Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (Russian: Андре́й Арсе́ньевич Тарко́вский) (April 4, 1932 - December 29, 1986) was a Russian film director, writer and opera director. Although Tarkovksy has directed only seven feature films during his twenty-year active career, he is widely regarded as the most important and influential Russian filmmaker of the late 20th century. He attained critical acclaim for directing such films as Andrei Rublev, Solaris and Stalker.

Tarkovsky has also worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, film theorist and theater director. He directed most of his films in the Soviet Union, with the exception of his last two films which were produced in Italy and Sweden. His films are characterized by Christian and metaphysical themes, extremely long takes, lack of conventional dramatic structure and plot, and memorable images of exceptional beauty.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Childhood and early life 1.2 Film school student 1.3 Film career in the Soviet Union 1.4 Film career outside the Soviet Union 2 Work 3 Life 4 Diary 5 Awards, honors and recognitions 6 Works 6.1 Filmography 6.2 Screenplays 6.3 Stage productions 6.4 Writings 7 Works about Tarkovsky 7.1 Books 7.2 Films 8 References 8.1 General References 9 External links

Tarkovsky was born in the village of Zavrazhye in Kostroma Province as the child of the poet and translator Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky and Maria Ivanova Vishnyakova, a graduate of the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute. In 1934 his sister Marina was born. He spent his childhood in Yuryevets in the Ivanovo Province.^[1] In 1937 the father left the family, and subsequently volunteered for the army in 1941. Tarkovsky stayed with his mother, and moved with her and his sister to Moscow, where she worked as a proofreader in a printing press. In 1939 Tarkovsky enrolled at the Moscow School № 554. During the war Tarkovsky, his mother and his sister Marina evacuated to Yuryevets and lived with Marias mother. In 1943 the family returned to Moscow. Tarkovsky continued his studies at his old school, where the poet Andrey Voznesensky was one of his classmates. He also learned the piano at a music school and attended classes at an art school. The family lived on the Shshipok Street in the Zamoskvorechye District in Moscow. Many themes of his childhood - the evacuation, his mother and her two children, the withdrawn father - feature prominently in his film The Mirror.

Directly after high school graduation, from 1951 to 1952, Tarkovsky studied Arabic at the Oriental Institute in Moscow, a branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He did not finished his studies and dropped out to work for the Academy of Science Institute for Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold as a prospector. He participated in a year-long research expedition to the river Kureikye near Turukhansk in the Krasnoyarsk Province. During this time in the Taiga Tarkovsky decided to study film.

Upon return from the research expedition in 1954 Tarkovsky applied at the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) and was admitted to the film-directing-program. He was in the same class as Irma Raush, whom he married in April 1957.^[2]

The early Khrushchev era offered unique opportunities for young film directors. Before 1953 annual film production was low and most films were directed by veteran directors. After 1953 more and more films were produced, many of them by young directors. The Khrushchev Thaw opened Soviet society and allowed, to some degree, Western literature, films and music. This allowed Tarkovksy to see films of the Italian neorealists and the French New Wave, and of directors such as Kurosawa, Buñuel, Bergman, Bresson and Mizoguchi. Tarkovsky absorbed the idea of the auteur as a necessary condition for creativity.

Tarkovsky’s teacher and mentor was Mikhail Romm, who taught many film students who would later become famous and influential film directors. In 1956 Tarkovsky directed his first student short film, The Killers after a short story of Ernest Hemingway. The short film There Will Be No Leave Today and the screenplay Concentrate followed in 1958 and 1959.

During his third year at the VGIK Tarkovsky met Andrei Konchalovsky. They found that they had much in common as they liked the same film directors and shared the same ideas on cinema and films. In 1959 they wrote the script Antarctica - Distant Country, which was later published in the Moskovskiy Komsomolets. Tarkovsky submitted the script to Lenfilm, but was rejected. They were more successful with the script The Steamroller and the Violin, which they sold to Mosfilm. This film became Tarkovsky’s diploma film, earning him his diploma in 1960 and winning him the first prize at the New York Student Film Festival in 1961.

Tarkovsky's first feature film was Ivan's Childhood in 1962. He had inherited the film from director Eduard Abalov, who had to abort the project. The film earned Tarkovksy international acclaim and won him the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1962. In the same year, on September 30, his first son Arseny (called Senka in Tarkovsky's diaries) Tarkovsky was born.

From 1965 to 1965 he directed the film Andrei Rublev about the life of Andrei Rublev, the great 15th century Russian icon painter. Andrei Rublev was not immediately released after completion due to problems with Soviet authorities. Tarkovsky had to cut the film several times, resulting in several different versions of varying lengths. A version of the film was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969 and won the FIPRESCI prize. The film was officially released in the Soviet Union in a cut version in 1971.

He divorced from his wife Irma Raush in 1970. In the same year he married Larissa Kizilova (née Egorkina), who had been a production assistant for the film Andrei Rublev. Their son Andrei Tarkovsky Jr. was born in the same year on August 7.

In 1971 he completed his film Solaris, an adaption of the novel Solaris by Stanisław Lem. He had worked on this project together with the screenwriter Fridrikh Gorenshtein as early as 1968. The film was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury and the FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. From 1973 to 1974 he shot the film The Mirror, a highly autobiographical film drawing on his childhood experience and incorporating some of his father's poems. From the beginning the film was not well received by Soviet authorities due to its content and its perceived elitist nature. Presumably these difficulties made Tarkovsky toy with the idea of going abroad and producing a film outside the Soviet film industry.^[3]

During 1975 Tarkovsky also worked on the screenplay Hoffmanniana, about the German writer and poet E. T. A. Hoffmann. In December 1976 he arranged, in Hamlet, his first and only stage play, at the Lenkom Theatre in Moscow. The main role was played by Anatoly Solonitsyn who also acted in several of Tarkovsky's films. At the end of 1978 he also wrote the screenplay Sardor together with the writer Aleksandr Misharin.

The last film Tarkovsky directed in the Soviet Union was Stalker, inspired by the novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Work on this film began in 1976. The production was mired in troubles. Improper development of the negatives had ruined all the exterior shots. Tarkovsky's relationship with the cinematographer Georgy Rerberg deteriorated to the point where Tarkovsky hired Alexander Knyazhinsky as a new first cinematographer. Furthermore, Tarkovsky suffered a heart attack in April 1978, resulting in further delay. The film was completed in 1979 and won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

During the summer of 1979 Tarkovsky traveled to Italy, where he shot the documentary Voyage in Time together with his longtime friend Tonino Guerra. Tarkovksy returned to Italy in 1980 for an extended trip during which he and Tonino Guerra completed the script for the film Nostalghia. During 1981 he traveled to the United Kingdom and Sweden. During his trip to Sweden he had considered defecting the Soviet Union, but ultimately decided to return because his wife and his son.

Tarkovsky returned to Italy in 1982 to start shooting Nostalghia. He never went back to his home country. As Mosfilm withdrew from the project, he had to complete the film with financial support provided by the Italian RAI. Tarkovsky completed the film in 1983. Nostalghia was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury, the FIPRESCI prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. Soviet authorities prevented the film to win the Palme d'Or, a fact that hardened Tarkovsky's resvolve to never work in the Soviet Union again. In the same year he also arranged the opera Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House in London under the musical direction of Claudio Abbado.

He spends most of 1984 preparing the film The Sacrifice. On July 10, 1984 he announced that he would never return to the Soviet Union and would remain in the West at a press conference in Milano. At this time his son Andrei Jr. was still in the Soviet Union and not allowed to leave the country.

During 1985 he shot the film The Sacrifice in Sweden. At the end of the year he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. In January 1986 he began treatment in Paris and is joined there by his wife and his son, who finally was allowed to leave the Soviet Union. The Sacrifice was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and received the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury, the FIPRESCI prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. As Tarkovsky was unable to attend due to his illness, the prizes were collected by his son Andrei Jr.

Tarkovsky died on December 29, 1986 in Paris at age 54. He is buried on January 3, 1987 on the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois in France. The inscription on his grave stone, which was created by the Russian sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, reads To the man who saw the Angel.

Tarkovsky's films are characterised by Christian and metaphysical themes, extremely long takes, and memorable images of exceptional beauty. Recurring motifs in his films are dreams, memory, childhood, running water accompanied by fire, rain indoors, reflections, levitation, and characters re-appearing in the foreground of long panning movements of the camera.

Tarkovsky developed a theory of cinema that he called "sculpting in time". By this he meant that the unique characteristic of cinema as a medium was to take our experience of time and alter it. Unedited movie footage transcribes time in real 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.

Up to and including his film Mirror, Tarkovsky focused his cinematic works on exploring this theory. After Mirror, he announced that he would focus his work on exploring the dramatic unities proposed by Aristotle: a concentrated action, happening in one place, within the span of a single day. Stalker is, by his own account, the only film that truly reflects this ambition;^{[citation needed]} it is also considered by many to be a near-perfect reflection of the sculpting in time theory.

"...it seems to me that the individual today stands at a crossroad, faced with the choice of whether to pursue the new technology and the endless multiplication of material goods, or to seek out a way that will lead to spiritual responsibility, a way that ultimately might mean not only his personal salvation but also the saving of society at large; in other words, turn to God." - Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986

Tarkovsky kept a fairly regular diary for much of his life. This published posthumously originally in 1989. The last entry was on December 15, 1986. His last words are "But now I have no strength left--that is the problem". After his death, his films, banned from the screens in the USSR, were given back to the Russian Public.

Numerous awards were bestowed on Tarkovsky throughout his lifetime. At the Venice Film Festival he was awarded the Golden Lion. At the Cannes Film Festival he won several times the FIPRESCI prize, the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury. He was also nominated for the Palme d'Or two times. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awarded the BAFTA Award for Best Film for his film The Sacrifice.

Under the influence of Glasnost and Perestroika Tarkovsky was finally recognized in the Soviet Union in the fall of 1986, shortly before his death, by a retrospective of his films in Moscow. After his death an entire issue of the film magazine Iskusstvo Kino was devoted to Tarkovsky. In their obituaries the film committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Union of Soviet Film Makers expressed their sorrow that Tarkovsky had to spend the last years of his life in exile.^[4]

Posthumously he was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1989 and the Lenin Prize in 1990, the two highest state honors in the Soviet Union. In 1989 the Andrei Tarkovsky Memorial Prize was established, with its first recipient being the Russian animator Yuriy Norshteyn. Since 1993 the Moscow International Film Festival awards the annual Andrei Tarkovsky Award. In 1996 the Andrei Tarkovsky Museum opened in Yuryevets, his childhood town.^[5]

Further information: Awards conferred on Andrei Tarkovsky

Year	English Title	Original Title	Country	Length
1956	The Killers	Убийцы	Soviet Union	19 min
1959	There Will be No Leave Today	Сегодня увольнения не будет	Soviet Union	46 min
1961	The Steamroller and the Violin	Каток и скрипка	Soviet Union	46 min
1962	Ivan's Childhood	Иваново детство	Soviet Union	95 min
1966	Andrei Rublev	Андрей Рублёв	Soviet Union	205 min
1972	Solaris	Солярис	Soviet Union	165 min
1975	Mirror	Зеркало	Soviet Union	108 min
1979	Stalker	Сталкер	Soviet Union	163 min
1982	Voyage in Time	Tempo di Viaggio	Italy	63 min
1983	Nostalghia	Nostalghia	Italy	125 min
1986	The Sacrifice	Offret	Sweden	149 min

Year	English Title	Original Title	Co-writer	Film
1958	Concentrate	Концентрат
1960	The Steamroller and the Violin	Каток и скрипка	Andrei Konchalovsky	The Steamroller and the Violin
1961	Ivan's Childhood	Иваново детство	Vladimir Bogomolov (original author)	Ivan's Childhood
1972	Solaris	Солярис	Fridrikh Gorenshtein	Solaris
1972	Light Wind (Ariel)	Светлый Ветер	Fridrikh Gorenshtein
	A White, White Day		Aleksandr Misharin
1975, 1984	Hoffmanniana	Гофманиана
1978	Stalker	Сталкер	Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (original authors)	Stalker
1978	Sardor	Сардор	Aleksandr Misharin
1978-1982	Nostalghia'	Ностальгия	Tonino Guerra	Nostalghia'
1984	The Sacrifice	Жертвоприношение		The Sacrifice

Year	Title	Composer/Playwright	Theater
1977	Hamlet	William Shakespeare	Lenkom Theatre, Moscow
1983	Boris Godunov	Modest Mussorgsky	Covent Garden, London

Year	Title
1987	Sculpting In Time
1993	Time Within Time: The Diaries 1970-1986

• Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series), edited by John Gianvito, University Press of Mississippi, 2006, ISBN 1-57806-220-9
• The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, by Mark Le Fanu, British Film Institute, 1987, ISBN 0-85170-194-9
• The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue, by Vida T. Johnston and Graham Petrie, 1994, ISBN 0-253-20887-4
• Andrei Tarkovsky, by Sean Martin, Pocket Essentials, 2006, ISBN 1-904048-49-8
• Andrei Rublev, by Robert Bird, British Film Institute, 2005, ISBN 1-84457-038-X
• Through the Mirror: Reflections on the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006, ISBN 1-904303-11-0

• Moscow Elegy (1988) - Documentary film by Alexander Sokurov, using mostly stock footage from Tarkovsky's films
• Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (1988) - Documentary film by Michal Leszczylowski, an editor of the film The Sacrifice

• Andrei Tarkovsky at the Internet Movie Database
• Andrei Tarkovsky at SensesOfCinema.com
• Webpage on Andrei Tarkovsky

v • d • e Works of Andrei Tarkovsky
Feature films	Ivan's Childhood • Andrei Rublev • Solaris • Mirror • Stalker • Nostalghia • Voyage in Time (with Tonino Guerra) • The Sacrifice
Student films	The Killers • Concentrate (screenplay)  • There Will Be No Leave Today • The Steamroller and the Violin
Books	Sculpting In Time • Time Within Time: The Diaries 1970-1986

v • d • e Cinema of Russia
Cinema of the Russian Empire (Pre-1917) • Cinema of the Soviet Union (1917-1990)
	Films A-Z • Films of the Russian Empire • Films of the Soviet Union • Animation • Festivals • Schools • Studios Actors • Cinematographers • Composers • Directors • Editors • Producers • Screenwriters