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Teaching a course at FACETS on TARKOVSKY
Wed, Aug 20 2008
Through the Mirror: TIME AS SUBSTANCE IN THE FILMS OF ANDREI TARKOVSKY
Tuesdays | Sept. 23 - Oct. 28 | 7-10 pm
Films screened and discussed:
Ivan's Childhood (1962)
The Mirror (1975)
Stalker (1979)
Nostalgia (1983)
The Sacrifice (1986)
"Although the assembly of the shots is responsible for the structure of the film, it does not, as is generally assumed, create its rhythm; the distinct time running through the shots makes the rhythm of the picture, and the rhythm is determined not by the length of edited pieces, but by the pressure of the time that runs through them. The pieces that 'won't edit', that can't be properly joined, are those which record a radically different kind of time"
-Andrei Tarkovsky, "Sculpting in Time"
Child of a poet and a war, more Dovzhenko than Eisenstein, and cited as an influence among such disparate directors as Lars Von Trier, Alexander Sokurov and Steven Spielberg - Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) injected narrative cinema with a probing mysticism. His films can be daunting in their length; Andrei Rublev, Stalker and Solaris approach the three-hour mark yet retain some of the most memorable and breathtakingly gorgeous images in cinema. Tarkovsky's signature: the time-altering long takes which demonstrated both the influence of Robert Bresson and Ingmar Bergman. Both painter of images and sculptor of time, Tarkovsky's films were controversial and censored in his home country for their mystical and metaphysical content. Tarkovsky believed that the film image is not to be a composite of different shots arranged in a structure within a specific sequence progressing in time. In this class, we will see the provocative, and ultimately rewarding, meditative cinema of Tarkovsky, as well as their seductive depth and hypnotic imagery.
Terence Hannum is a Chicago based multi-media artist, musician, writer and educator. He recently had a solo-exhibition Don't Give Up the Ghost in Dallas, TX and his three-channel video installation Evocation (Featuring Sunn O)))) was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
© 2008 Terence Hannum - Site by Content Hungry