Site Updates Log |
December 31, 2001
Nostalghia.com has received word from Russia that
Andrei's sister Marina is currently working hard on her
new book about the Tarkovskys. The book will contain some new facts about
their family roots as well as rich biographical details. Watch this website
for future updates on this book project. Thanks to Eugene in Ivanovo for the heads-up.
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December 18, 2001
Nostalghia.com has received permission from Sight and Sound to
reproduce their article Tarkovsky's Choice.
Tarkovsky's famous, and highly revealing, 1972 list of his top ten favourite movies
is reproduced in this article.
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December 15, 2001
The
Red Vic Cinema in San Francisco is showing The Sacrifice on Sunday
January 6 (at 2:00, 5:00, 8:00), as well as a Chris Marker double bill: La jetée
and One Day in the Life on Andrei Arsenevich on Monday and Tuesday
January 7 and 8 (at 7:15 and 9:15).
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December 15, 2001
The Graduate School of Design in Pforzheim
(Hochschule für Gestaltung Pforzheim),
Germany, invites the general public to a lecture by Andreas Bär to be held
on December 17 at 1600 hours, in Room 1.19.
The title of the talk is Imprinted Time ("Sculpting in Time")
and a discussion follows immediately after.
During the presentation, original paintings by Andreas Bär will be shown which were created at the
shooting locations of Andrei Tarkovsky's films.
A screening of Nostalghia is also scheduled in connection with the event.
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December 13, 2001
Ingmar Bergman recently granted a rare interview to Reuters.
This is also one of those rare (recorded) cases where he actually mentions Andrei Tarkovsky.
See the article, Demons haunt cinema maestro.
Thanks to Nostalghia.com Senior Europe Correspondent Harm Snel for notifying us of this Reuters piece.
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December 8, 2001
Great news from Florence: according to Corriere
della Sera (6 December) Edizione della Meridiana
have just published a full edition of Martyrolog (the diaries) in Italian,
sponsored by the Institut International Andrei Tarkovski in Paris.
A parallel Russian edition is being published in Russia, sponsored by the
Tarkovsky Foundation there. No details on availability yet.
A Russian translation of the Corriere article and a commentary
are available
at Inopressa
and Lenta.
(We thank Gregory Meshman for showing us those articles!)
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December 6, 2001
The Dutch Film Museum today commences their Tarkovsky Retrospective
Festival. The festival runs from December 6 through to January 24, 2002. All major Tarkovsky works,
including several documentaries, are shown in selected cities across Holland.
Full information, including photos and some posters, may be found at The Dutch
Film Museum website. You may access the programme directly here.
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December 5, 2001
The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., will
be screening Chris Marker's documentary One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich
December 6 - 9, in the East Building auditorium.
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November 22, 2001
It's official: RusCiCo
announces
the release of Stalker on DVD in December (no exact date yet).
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November 15, 2001
Attention, our Chinese-speaking audience.
What is probably the first article in Chinese to systematically
introduce the work of Tarkovsky to Chinese readers is now available for
download via Nostalghia.com. The article,
Andrei Tarkovsky: Redemption and Poetic Narrative, was written by Qing Liu of the Institute of Chinese Studies,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, and is posted here with his kind
permission. The article is simultaneously being published in the Chinese scholarly journal
"The Twenty-First Century" (The Chinese University of Hong Kong). Nostalghia.com is proud
to have been involved in the production of this article to some small degree, and
it is our hope that the posting of the article here will aid significantly in
its dissemination.
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November 12, 2001
Another delay from Artificial Eye (U.K.). Their Solaris DVD is
now scheduled for January 21, 2002. Further, a price hike has taken place (for those who
didn't preorder already), presumably an indication this may turn out to be a two-disk set.
Thanks to Nick W. for constantly updating us on the latest from Artificial Eye.
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November 4, 2001
It appears the Artificial Eye (UK) DVD release of Andrei Rublov has
been pushed back to January 21, 2002.
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November 3, 2001
Hessischer Rundfunk (HR, Germany) is screening Ivan's Childhood at 2245 hours local time tonight.
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October 22, 2001
The Russian Cinema Council (RusCiCo) announces that their Ivan's Childhood DVD is slated for release
in January 2002. They state that Mirror is set for release in January 2002 as well (they had previously quoted
December 2001 as the release date for Mirror).
All disks will be Region 0, both PAL and NTSC versions will be available.
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October 19, 2001
An interview with Vadim Yusov, longtime Tarkovsky cameraman, has
been added to our Topics' Section. Yusov is here uncharacteristically candid on why he declined to
film Mirror. The interview is located here.
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October 10, 2001
The Dutch Film Museum reports that they will be arranging a Tarkovsky Retrospective
Festival in Amsterdam, Holland, December 6 to January 24, 2002. New prints
have been obtained for the occasion. Some Tarkovsky related documentaries will be screened as well
(e.g., De Weg Naar Bresson, see our Documentaries section).
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October 10, 2001
A discussion developing here
indicates that the upcoming Artificial Eye Tarkovsky releases may be direct ports of the corresponding RusCiCo releases.
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October 6, 2001
Artificial Eye (U.K.) has announced that they will release Solaris (159 min version) on DVD on November 19, 2001.
Further, their Andrei Rublov (174 min version) DVD is scheduled for release on November 26, 2001. Both disks are in PAL format.
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October 1, 2001
The Russian Cinema Council (RusCiCo) announces that both their Stalker and Mirror DVDs are slated for release in December 2001. The disks will be Region 0, both PAL and NTSC versions will be made available.
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September 21, 2001
A very interesting interview with Andrei Tarkovsky
has been added to our Topics section. As we mentioned
earlier (see one of the Aug. 1 notes below) it's a transcript of an audio
recording made in Stockholm during the preparations for filming The Sacrifice.
The interview was conducted by Jerzy Illg and Leonard Neuger who published it in 1987,
in the first legal issue of the Polish quarterly "Res Publica" (which had
been available illegally before, meaning without the Communist government
approval. NB: in every country of the former Eastern Europe everything ever printed
— including business cards and matchboxes — had to be approved by the
government censor's office which, by the way, officially did not exist). Jerzy Illg
is a journalist and editor-in-chief of the ZNAK Publishers in Cracow, Poland.
Leonard Neuger is a professor at the Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literature,
Stockholm University. We are greatly indebted to them for allowing us to
translate and post this remarkable interview.
And an administrivia message to our news-starved visitors: the site is being
updated constantly, remember to check the SITE UPDATES LOG link above for the latest
at any time. These updates were conceived mainly as a means of communication
between the webmasters, so excuse the lack of any literary value whatsoever.
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September 8, 2001
Film director Terrance Grace has presented Nostalghia.com with
a fascinating and highly relevant set of photographs that he took during his travels in Italy in
the late 1980s. The photo gallery is located here.
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September 2, 2001
We have finally added the bibliographic references to
pre-1989 Tarkovsky's interviews as originally published in
The Tolstoy Complex.
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August 21, 2001
We received a very nice e-mail from PR at Turner Classic
Movies explaining the absence of Tempo di viaggio at their Tarkovsky
Television Festival. Yes, they are well aware of the documentary but it's the
rights problem and TCM is unable to air it.
Let's hope the legal status of the film clears up soon and in the meantime
let's enjoy the Festival and all of its rarities.
And on this web site there is a new page of fragments of Tarkovsky's early interviews
regarding Andrei Rublov.
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August 18, 2001
More information from the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) Channel
regarding their upcoming Tarkovsky Television Festival (see the Festival schedule
under August 1 entry below) has been posted recently on Michael Schwalm's Tarkovsky
bulletin board. We refer
you to that article for details and only mention a few highlights:
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August 17, 2001
A very interesting discussion is developing on the
CriterionDVD bulletin board on the topic of differences between the Criterion
and the RusCiCo Rublov DVDs. Follow the progress of the debate
here.
NOTE: The CriterionDVD bulletin board has apparently been shut down.
You may browse our locally archived version of this thread.
This is a PDF file, you will need the (free) Acrobat Reader. Read the discussion
here.
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August 15, 2001
The eagerly awaited Andrei Rublov DVD from RusCiCo
has finally arrived at Nostalghia.com and we are happy to report this release
was well worth the wait. Not only is the (anamorphic) transfer quality very good but
the 2-disc set includes several interesting documentary supplements: interview
with Tarkovsky's sister Marina, a 5-minute short made on the set, a documentary
about Theophanes the Greek, and a few film etudes. We don't know if the
documentary from the set is Panfilov's student film we mentioned on this page
on July 11.
This DVD set is the "official" 185-minute version which Tarkovsky approved of
although events leading to his approval remain somewhat obscure.
The original 205-minute cut is available on a Criterion DVD and the two versions
make a fascinating comparison: not only scenes were cut or shortened, also
alternate takes were used.
Finally, the previews of the upcoming RusCiCo releases of Mirror and
Stalker included on the discs are themselves a revelation. First of
all their quality is
astounding. One had no idea what was captured on the original Eastmancolor
camera negative: images of extraordinary sharpness and gorgeous color. The Zone
from Stalker is simply beautiful to look at and actors' faces have
an astonishing luminosity and... immediacy. Another surprise is that these previews
are made mostly of outtakes — what a treat!
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August 1, 2001
We have just learned that the Turner Classic Movies (TCM)
Channel will be broadcasting Chris Marker's Documentary "Une Journee d'Andrei Arsenevitch"
in September during their Tarkovsky Retrospecive. Michal Leszczylowski's documentary
"Regi Andrej Tarkovskij" will also be aired.
A Nostalghia.com visitor just submitted the following TCM schedule:
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August 1, 2001
Nostalghia.com is pleased to present, for the first time ever in English, the unabridged
Tarkovsky interview by distinguished journalists Jerzy Illg
and Leonard Neuger. In this exceptionally candid interview, Andrei
covers some of the same issues he writes about in Sculpting in Time, but he here appears to
be speaking more openly about some of them.
Illg and Neuger are currently proof-reading the final version of the interview. It will be posted
in its entirety once we get their go-ahead. For now, only a few preview-snippets are posted.
The interview is located in the Topics' Section.
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August 1, 2001
Disappointing news from Criterion. In recent correspondence to
Nostalghia.com they write:
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August 1, 2001Nostalghia.com is officially launched on Wednesday August 1, 2001 at 00:00:00 MDT. Hit-counter is set to "000000". |
July 23, 2001
In view of the recent news that the Criterion Collection is
planning to release Stalker, tentatively in late-2002, it is interesting to speculate what might
be the extras included on this disk. Nostalghia.com webmasters consider the following items highly
desirable
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July 11, 2001
Now, if only someone would include Gleb Panfilov's little-known
1965 15-minute documentary from the set of Andrei Rublev
on their DVD, as an extra, we would all be so very much happier!
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June 15, 2001
History Lesson:Image Entertainment Solaris DVD redux... This takes us back to mid-January of 1999: [Dear Sir:] This could be a lot of people at Image but I'll return your inquiry right now. SOLARIS was licensed to Image from Corinth video in NY. We had released this title before on Laserdisc so we thought we had all the elements to work with and started production in earnest. When we announced this title a fan of the film wrote us and mentioned that about 30% of the subtitles for the film were missing. He explained that the lack of subtitles made it hard to follow the plot. We looked at it and indeed he was correct. We stopped production and hired a Russian translator to re-subtitle the film. The new translations were given to Captions Inc. who created a new subtitle file for us. The entire DVD project was finally two days away from completion when we got a strange phone call from Corinth Video. After months of working on this we were told that we really didn't have the rights to release it on DVD. The actual rights were sold to Janus Films in NY. This all happened about a week ago and it was a big shock to us. We had really put a lot of effort into this title, we even had the packaging printed up and ready to go. We are trying to get the rights back by sub-licensing the title from Janus. That's as much as I can tell you for now. Write me if you have any questions about this. [source witheld] Director of Production Image Entertainment (Letter originally posted on USENET, with the author's permission) |
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May 31, 2001
A quick comparison between the Solaris Image Laserdisk and the Ruscico DVD
Thanks to Jan for these framegrabs. The image digitizer employed is
cheap - image quality is sub optimal
at best. These grabs are thus primarily suited for judging the
difference in cropping. More realistic flesh tones may certainly be discerned, but
notice how much better the DVD preserves Andrei's intended framing (top, bottom,
left, right). I am sure every cinephile out there agrees with me:
Kudos to the Ruscico crew!
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May 27, 2001
RusCiCo Solaris DVD - Menu samples (menus are tri-lingual)
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May 24, 2001The Criterion Collection (www.criterionco.com) is currently working on releases of Stalker and Solaris. These releases are planned for 2002. The only officially confirmed title, however, is Ivan's Childhood, scheduled for release later this year. |
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May 24, 2001
Criterion Collection statement on the Ruscico Solaris DVD
NOTE:
A similar, but more strongly worded, letter appeared on The Criterion DVD Forum - reproduced below FYI.
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February 16, 2001Michael Lellouche writes: I would like to tell you that Collected Screenplays in French [will be] published in two books. Incredible work, with also all short stories, exclusive things, unpublished material, his kino-novels, and also all original material novels from "Solaris" (Lem novel), "Stalker" etc. The novels are included. So many things. I will try to type an article on the French books which are so outstanding. |
©2001 www.nostalghia.com
All Rights Reserved
Andrei Rublov has been released on Region 0 DVD by the Russian
Cinema Council (RusCiCo), sure to spark another round of debate regarding the
distribution rights of Andrei Tarkovsky titles in North-America.
We note (from RusCiCo's website) that the new release by RusCiCo is the 185 minute version
of the movie. Criterion has the distribution
rights for the title in English-speaking North-America. However, Criterion's
disk contains the 205 minute cut, which is, presumably, the original 5642 m
version from 1966. The movie was immediately after the 1966 premiere cut down to
5250 m and then finally to 5076 m (185 min). This 5076 meter version, now
released by RusCiCo, is reputedly the one favored by Andrei. The long 205 min, 5642 m cut was
not seen again until it was screened in 1988 during the retrospective in Moscow. The
print was saved by the editor, Lyudmila Feiginova, who, according to nostalghia.com sources,
kept it for about 15 years in her home, hidden under her bed. Criterion obtained a print
through Martin Scorsese who was able to obtain it, and the rights, from his
contacts in Moscow (Criterion, oddly enough, refers to this cut as the Director's Cut).
In theory, therefore, since the two versions are very different, both versions invaluable to the
Tarkovsky scholar, and since Criterion apparently has no plans of making this important alternate cut
available as part of the Criterion Collection, RusCiCo would presumably have no problems distributing this
title in North-America through their normal distributor, Image Entertainment. This remains to be seen, however.
We are pretty sure that most Tarkovsky connoisseurs out there are quite eager
to finally get their hands on both versions of this movie. Note finally that the RusCiCo version
is in an anamorphic transfer, as opposed to Criterion's version.
Approximate crop delta
