“Revisiting Tarkovsky”: Lincoln Center, July 7-14
Revisiting Tarkovsky
July 7 – July 14, 2009
The Walter Reade Theatre, Lincoln Center, New York
Okay, so maybe New Yorkers are right after all: Manhattan really is the centre of the universe. To heck with the Empire State Building, they’ve got MOVIES! Years back I salivated over the two-month cinematic smorgasbord that was “The Hidden God” – the accompanying volume of essays is one of the indispensable books on faith and film. During my first trip to La Pomme Grande I tasted a retrospective of rarely-seen Rossellini works at MOMA, including a display of vintage RR posters, and documents such as the first letters and telegrams between the director and Ingrid Bergman. It doesn’t stop: The Dardennes were there plumping their new flick and trotting out the old stuff a month or so ago, and now it’s Tarkovsky in the spotlight.
Not that Andrei will be there himself. But Dmitri will. July 7, 8, 9 and 14, Russian expat Dmitri Trakovsky (no rleation) will be in the house to screen and chat (do Russians chat?) about his new documentary Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky (2008). The flick is described thusly in Lincoln Centre propaganda:
In 1987, a year after Tarkovsky’s death, Dmitry Trakovsky and his parents emigrated from Russia to the United States, where he grew up feeling a special relationship to the images, sounds, and themes in Tarkovsky’s films. Here, he goes in searchof other lives affected by the auteur’s work: collaborators Erland Josephson and Domiziana Giordano, friends Krzysztof Zanussi and Franco Terilli, an Orthodox priest, and even the director’s son. Andrei Andreevich Tarkovsky. The result is a touching, highly personal and provocative record of the lingering effects of Tarkovsky on an extraordinary range of individuals.
There’s a trailer for the film, and an opportunity to donate toward the (apparently uncompleted) work, here.
The Trako doc is embedded in a Tarkothon of all seven of the Russian director’s feature films.
Andrei Rublev (“Andrey Rublyov” 1966)
Ivan’s Childhood (“Ivanovo detstvo” 1962)
The Mirror (“Zerkalo” 1975)
Nostalgia (“Nostalghia” 1983)
The Sacrifice (“Offret” 1986)
Solaris (“Solyaris” 1972)
Stalker (1979)
Doug Cummings posts further notes on the Trakovsky flick at filmjourney.com, as well as a detailed look at another doc currently in circulation, Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side of ‘Stalker’. And of course the definitive Tarkovsky site is Nostalghia.com
The recent CinemaFest at BAM was nothing to sneeze at, either. Arnaud Desplechin was around to chat about one of his favorite movies – The Royal Tenenbaums. Andrew Bujalski’s (aka mumblecore guy) newest film premiered there. And lots more. BAM, between the Rose Cinemas and their Cinematek series, has an awful lot of good film going!
But Manhattan has more specialized film houses, and Film Forum, my personal favorite, is playing Alien right now. Let’s not forget the Museum of the Moving Image, either. Through the Museum, I was able to see all the Oscar contenders last year pre-release, followed by discussions with some of the cast, the director, and/or the writer. And one of my first times at Walter Reade was for a Kieslowski festival. We saw something like seventeen films in ten days.
New York is where it’s at.