Andrei Tarkovsky About His Film Art in His Own Words

About this book

"From About Art-- ...The man should bot be a slave of his knowledge about this world and should not impose his rules on this world...." "From Basics of Film Aesthetics-- ....The movie represents your point of view on the reality, and this point of view should not be changed during the whole film, otherwise you destroy your movie. For example, if you start to assemble the pieces of one scene, and you have one short piece in a different light, it does not work: it will not fit into the movie; it would destroy the scene... The angle in which the camera casts creates a subjective space. If you change the angle of the camera position, you change this subjective space..... Some people think that the photographic medium - film can truly reproduce nature. "just let us photograph the forest and the camera will true nature." This is wrong. Like an actor, nature can be true or false... There are some trees which cannot be filmed. I don't know why it does not work.." "From About Disaster and Stalker-- We are worse than kids playing with matches. We reached such a low spiritual level, that if an atomic disaster had happened, it would just mean we deserved it. It means we have to struggle to achieve the spiritual affirmation of our existence. Do not just characterize "life is good" and "death is not good." People always died and will die; everybody will be confronted with death sooner or later. What's the difference, if a total disaster happens and everybody dies; so W H A T?! Maybe it would somehow be more fun to die all together instead of all alone. The question is: why are we so afraid?... If we pose the question like this, we will find that we are not afraid because we discovered the possibility of death, but because we feel a spiritual emptiness which we perceive as the danger leading to the disaster...."