Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=676 / CC BY SA 3.0

Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (; 4 April 1932 – 29 December 1986) was a Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director. His work is characterized by long takes, unconventional dramatic structure, distinctly authored use of cinematography, and spiritual and metaphysical themes. His contribution to cinema was so influential that works done in a similar way are described as Tarkovskian. Director Ingmar Bergman said of him:

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

Tarkovsky's art is a significant and unusual phenomenon of world culture. His films form is a magnum opus of the cycle of suffering and hopes of a person who assumes the burden of moral responsibility for the whole world. Conceptual and artistic solutions of Tarkovsky differ in originality and depth. The events of his films are immersed in an atmosphere of mystery and ambiguity, which prompts the viewer to look for different, sometimes mutually exclusive interpretations. His films include "Ivan's Childhood" (1962), "Andrei Rublev" (1966), "Solaris" (1972), "Mirror" (1975), and "Stalker" (1979). He directed the first five of his seven feature films in the Soviet Union; his last two films, "Nostalghia" (1983) and "The Sacrifice" (1986), were produced in Italy and Sweden, respectively. The films "Andrei Rublev", "Solaris", "Mirror", and "Stalker" are regularly listed among the greatest films of all time and became classics and examples for imitation in the world of cinema.

Andrei Tarkovsky was born in the village of Zavrazhye in the Yuryevetsky District of the Ivanovo Industrial Oblast (modern-day Kadyysky District of the Kostroma Oblast, Russia) to the poet and translator Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky, a native of Yelisavetgrad, Kherson Governorate, and Maria Ivanova Vishnyakova, a graduate of the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute who later worked as a corrector; she was born in Moscow in the Dubasov family estate. Andrei's paternal grandfather Aleksandr Karlovich Tarkovsky (in ) was a Polish nobleman who worked as a bank clerk. His wife Maria Danilovna Rachkovskaya was a Romanian teacher who arrived from Iași. Andrei's maternal grandmother Vera Nikolaevna Vishnyakova (née Dubasova) belonged to an old Dubasov family of Russian nobility that traces its history back to the 17th century; among her relatives was Admiral Fyodor Dubasov, a fact she had to conceal during the Soviet days. She was married to Ivan Ivanovich Vishnyakov, a native of the Kaluga Governorate who studied law at the Moscow University and served as a judge in Kozelsk. According to the family legend, Tarkovsky's ancestors on his father's side were princes from the Shamkhalate of Tarki, Dagestan, although his sister Marina Tarkovskaya who did a detailed research on their genealogy called it «a myth, even a prank of sorts», stressing that none of the documents confirms this version.

Tarkovsky spent his childhood in Yuryevets. He was described by childhood friends as active and popular, having many friends and being typically in the center of action. His father left the family in 1937, subsequently volunteering for the army in 1941. Tarkovsky stayed with his mother, moving with her and his sister Marina to Moscow, where she worked as a proofreader at a printin...