Mosaics of Time: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky

‘Film is a mosaic made up of time’. - Andrei Tarkovsky

For Tarkovsky, cinema is unique among the arts in its dimension of time – fixing reality and conserving it in each frame. In his book of reflections on filmmaking, Sculpting in Time, he muses on why people go to the cinema: ‘what a person normally goes to the cinema for is time: for time lost or spent or not yet had. He goes there for living experience; for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and concentrates a person’s experience’.

Over the course of just seven feature films, he established his place among the greats and came to define a distinct style of filmmaking, influencing generations of filmmakers to come – from Béla Tarr to Lars von Trier and Claire Denis.

To mark the 4K restoration re-releases of his darkly poetic vision of exile, Nostalghia, and his melancholic swansong The Sacrifice, we’ll be screening a selection of the great auteur’s works throughout August, taking the place of our Sunday season for the month, and extending to a takeover of Cinébabies.

This season spans his debut feature Ivan’s Childhood which won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1962 and first brought the Russian director international acclaim; to his later forays into science fiction, with Solaris and Stalker, each offering surreal and disturbing visions of the future, and his most autobiographical work Mirror – a mesmerising composition of a dying man’s dreams and recollections.

Tarkovsky was a true poet of cinema and there’s nowhere better than the big screen to revisit these masterworks.

Tarkoffersky: Get 15% off when you purchase tickets to three or more screenings as part of our Mosaics of Time: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky season. Discount applies automatically at checkout.

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