Andrei Tarkovsky

[cliveh]

With regard to still film photography, do we have any APUG people who appreciate the film making style of Andrei Tarkovsky? I think his cinematic technique is probably the nearest you can get to superb still photography. Andrey’s compositions are amazing. He will often keep the camera still and just change the lighting or scene.

 

[Jerevan]

Yeah, he is one of the great, he really has the photographic eye. He's an inspiration, no doubt.

Stalker really is the film that comes up first in my mind, and secondly, Anton Rubliev (which is one of the longest films I have ever experienced).

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

I have his notebooks translations until 4 day to his death. Soviets always critic him and never allowed to shoot a film for a very long time period , but he had many film projects in his mind. His films and music selection was extremelly good. Artemyev was his music composer for Stalker and it was the nicest music I have ever listened. Soviet symphonic rock and electronic music is faraway better than British ones.
I watched a collection from first to last and wonderful.
Thank you for reminding to collect soviet rock electronic music

 

[theoria]

He is one of my favorite directors. He was also a pretty good photographer, although his photos don't quite manage to deliver the same superb poetry one can find in his movies.

http://www.amazon.com/Instant-Light...6140/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323984580&sr=8-1

 

[gorbas]

Andrei Tarkovsky usually operated film camera by himself. Extremely rare occurrence on the film sets. I was watching some doc about him and they say that he was unable to give direction to the actors unless he was watching them thru viewfinder.

 

[cliveh]

Stalker is my favourite.

 

[mbsmith]

I am also a big fan of Tarkovsky (Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Stalker are my favs). I find that most of my favorite filmmakers and cinematographers have a strong influence/connection with still photography. Michelangelo Antonioni is another one of my favorites who uses very little camera movement and has very "layered" compositions that are quite amazing.

 

[Michael W]

He was a great film maker. I also like his Polaroids very much. Really poetic.

 

[octofish]

Word OP! Tarkovsky's cinematography is one of the main things that drove me to become more interested in still photography (and actually artemyev's score for stalker did the same for electronic music/sound art, but that's a different story). Tarkovsky is the best of the best. And Stalker is the best thing he did. It's flawless. There are so many things I love about it. The fascination he has with decay and texture, and especially water. His absolute mastery of composition and of colour.The scene where they all fall asleep on the green boggy grass with all the pools of water, and there's the fire there, and then the dog appears. The leaning poles (crucifixes) when they first enter the zone. The sand pile room. The crazy high contrast b&w industrial landscapes at the start. And that's just visually...

Some his polaroids are available here riowang.blogspot.com/2010/06/tarkovskys-polaroids.html (sorry for the poor link the forum still wont let me do proper ones)

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

His Polaroid series is very nice, though it's an expensive book for its size. I really like his black and white movie work: Ivan's Childhood is magnificently shot, and has indeed his recurring fascination with water.

 

[Royalrat]

Great director with remarkable films.

 

[coigach]

A sideways step for the thread - if off-topic please forgive me. (I find it very difficult to think of visual images without musical connections...!)

You might enjoy this music. It's by Tarkovsky Quartet, and is austerely beautiful composed / improvised music.

It's a direct tribute to the atmosphere of Tarkovsky's films by pianist Francois Couturier. It's gorgeously produced, and features Tarkovsky's polaroids as the album artwork. Listen to excerpts here:
http://player.ecmrecords.com/tarkovsky

(There's another earlier album called 'Nostalghia" if you like this).

 

[cliveh]

Coigach, thanks for that and will try and add that to my music collection. The first time I heard Erik Satie was in connection to images by Eugene Atget, which also seemed to fit together well.

 

[JMB]

A great master without a doubt.

 

[Metroman]

The films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Béla Tarr have had more influence on my photography than anything else. I have all their films on DVD and regularly watch them - even Tarr's 7.5 hour epic "Sátántangó".

 

[jglass]

Lars von Trier, in connection with his new film Melancholia, reportedly says: "There is no doubt that Tarkovsky is the master of them all." I really liked "Stalker" even without completely getting it. Behold, a couple of shots from my living room, which I do when a film really visually impresses me: