A triple play of the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, including the original SOLARIS, will screen at the Philoctetes Center this month

The Philoctetes Center
247 East 82nd St.
Wednesday, July 14, 21, 28, suggested donation $5, 7:00
646-422-0544
www.philoctetes.org

Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky made only seven feature films in his too-brief career, as he died from lung cancer in 1986 at the age of fifty-four. But what a resume he compiled, creating his own visual language and style in such seminal works as THE SACRIFICE, NOSTALGHIA, STALKER, and IVAN’S CHILDHOOD. His three other films will be part of a summer series running this month at the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of the Imagination. Prepare to be amazed.

The long, meditative ANDREI RUBLEV kicks off Tarkovsky series at the Philoctetes Center

ANDREI RUBLEV (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
Wednesday, July 14, suggested donation $5, 7:00
www.kino.com

Andrei Tarkovsky’s marvelous — and very long, at nearly three and a half hours — study of Russian religious painter and monk Andrei Rublev is breathtaking in its epic scope and sublime beauty. Anatoli Solonitsyn stars in this primarily black-and-white tale that has the look and feel of an old classic Russian film from the 1930s (or earlier). It is about faith, about the earth, and about as slow moving as a film can get. The section about the bell is unforgettable. As with several of Tarkovsky’s films, it was cowritten by Andrei Konchalovsky, who made an attempt at Hollywood in the 1980s, churning out such terrible fare as HOMER & EDDIE and TANGO & CASH following a decent start with MARIA’S LOVERS and RUNAWAY TRAIN.

SOLARIS (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
Wednesday, July 21, suggested donation $5, 7:00
www.kino.com

Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatus Banionis star in the Russian 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, in which something strange is going on in outer space that is unexplainable to both the characters in the film and the people in the audience. Banionis plays Chris Kelvin, who is sent to the Solaris space station to decide whether to put an end to the solaristics project that Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) complicated twenty years before. What he discovers is one death, two possibly insane men, and his supposedly dead wife (Bondarchuk). Ambiguity reigns supreme in this gorgeously shot (in color and black and white) and scored film that, while technically sci-fi, is really about the human conscience, another gem from master Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (IVAN’S CHILDHOOD, ANDREI RUBLEV, NOSTALGHIA). See it whether or not you checked out Steven Soderbergh’s underrated remake with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.

THE MIRROR completes Tarkovsky hat trick at Philoctetes Center

THE MIRROR (ZERKALO) (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)
Wednesday, July 28, suggested donation $5, 7:00
www.kino.com

”Words can’t really express a person’s emotions. They’re too inert.” So says Andrei Tarkovsky in his dream-filled, surreal masterpiece THE MIRROR, which features long scenes with little or no dialogue. Tarkovsky turns the mirror on himself and his childhood to tell the fragmented and disjointed story of WWII-era Russia through his own personal experiences with his family. Tarkovsky was obsessed with film as art, and this nonlinear film is his poetic masterpiece; he even includes his father’s poems read over shots that are crafted as if paintings. Many of the actors play several roles; have fun trying to figure out who is who and what exactly is going on at any one moment.