films of andrei tarkovsky screening at eckerd college

Received via email from the director of the International Cinema Series at Eckerd College:

This is just to remind you that we are screening the films of Andrei Tarkovsky in the Miller Auditorium this January term. All films will screen at 11:15 a.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays - with ONE exception: this Wednesday, January 13, we will screen Sacrifice beginning at 11:30 a.m., due to a previous engagement that will last until then.

All other films, again, will screen at 11:15 a.m. on the dates listed below. Anyone who is interested is welcome to come see the films with us. Students from the class will be giving brief (5-10 minute) introductions to each film. All films will be screened from the best available DVD versions on our top-of-the-line projector in the Miller Auditorium. All films have English subtitles.

The Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) is widely regarded as one of the most important and visionary of filmmakers. Ingmar Bergman said of him: "Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream."

Here is the upcoming schedule:

Wednesday, January 13 - Sacrifice (1986, 149m) - A celebrated Swedish actor comes to fear that the world is coming to an end, unless he performs a great act of sacrifice. This was Tarkovsky's final film, as he died of cancer shortly after its completion. It is also the second film that he made, along with Nostalghia, after defecting from the Soviet Union.

Monday, January 18 - Ivan's Childhood (1962, 95m) - Young Ivan is a military spy, whose childhood was stolen from him when his family was killed during WWII. This was Tarkovsky's first full-length feature film, that he took over from another director who had abandoned the project. This film's success demonstrated amply his talents as a filmmaker and hints at themes that were to become more prominent in his later work.

Wednesday, January 20 - Andrei Rublev (1966, 205m) - Explores the life and times of the great Russian icon painter Andrei Rublev. An experimental epic, that created several conflicts between Tarkovsky and the Russian authorities, and was only released in a severely edited version in Russia after it was enormously successful at the Cannes film festival, where a print had been smuggled out of the USSR.

Monday, January 25 - Solaris (1972, 165m) - The Russian answer to 2001: A Space Odyssey ... Tarkovsky adapted Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem's famous novel of a psychiatrist who travels to a space station orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris, to investigate why the crewmembers appear to have lost their focus and their grip on sanity.

Wednesday, January 27 - The Mirror (1975, 108m) - Tarkovksy's experimental homage to his mother is deeply autobiographical, and profoundly poetic.

Hope to see many of you there. Tarkovsky is a challenging but brilliant filmmaker, whose work repays the attentive viewer.

Visit www.eckerd.edu for more info.