"One woman sent me on a letter written to her by her daughter, and the young girl's words are a remarkable statement about artistic creation as an in… - Andrei Tarkovsky

"One woman sent me on a letter written to her by her daughter, and the young girl's words are a remarkable statement about artistic creation as an infinitely versatile and subtle form of communication:
'...How many words does a person know?' she asks her mother. 'How many does he use in his everyday vocabulary? One hundred, two, three? We wrap our feelings up in words, try to express in words sorrow and joy and any sort of emotion, the very things that can't in fact be expressed. Romeo uttered beautiful words to Juliet, vivid, expressive words, but they surely didn't say even half of what made his heart feel as if it was ready to jump out of his chest, and stopped him breathing, and made Juliet forget everything except her love?
There's another kind of language, another form of communication: by means of feeling, and images. That is the contact that stops people being separated from each other, that brings down barriers. Will, feeling, emotion — these remove obstacles from between people who otherwise stand on opposite sides of a mirror, on opposite sides of a door.. The frames of the screen move out, and the world which used to be partitioned off comes into us, becomes something real... And this doesn't happen through little Audrey, it's Tarkovsky himself addressing the audience directly, as they sit on the other side of the screen. There's no death, there is immortality. Time is one and undivided, as it says in one of the poems. "At the table are great-grandfathers and grandchildren.." Actually Mum, I've taken the film entirely from an emotional angle, but I'm sure there could be a different way of looking at it. What about you? Do write and tell me please.."

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About Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (Russian: Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский) (4 April 1932 – 29 December 1986) was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist and opera director.

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Also Known As

Birth Name: Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky
Native Name: Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский
Alternative Names: Andrej Tarkovskij Andrei Tarkovski Andrej Tarkovszkij And. Arsenʹevich Tarkovskiĭ Andrey Arsenyevich Tarkovsky Andreĭ Arsenʹevich Tarkovskĭi Andrei Tarkovskij Andreĭ Arsenévich Tarkovskiĭ Andrey Tarkovsky Andreĭ Arsen'evich Tarkovskiĭ Andrej Tarkowskij Andreiĭ Arsen'evich Tarkovskiĭ Andrei Arsen'evich Tarkovskii

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Additional quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky

Why do I feel this alone? Basically, because I’ve always been alone. I’ve always been alone. And alone I’ll be. It’s about time I become aware of it and never forget it.

What is the essence of the director's work? We could define it as sculpting in time. Just as a sculptor takes a lump of marble, and, inwardly conscious of the features of his finished piece, removes everything that is not a part of it — so the film-maker, from a 'lump of time' made up of an enormous, solid cluster of living facts, cuts off and discards whatever he does not need, leaving only what is to be an element of the finished film, what will prove to be integral to the cinematic image.

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We are talking here about the future: about the lives of people in the world without wars, without social oppression, without national inequality, without suppression of human’s abilities. In other word, it is about the future that we all call Communism. We strive to imagine (and show to the viewer) the reality of the 21st century — the life of future humans developing, solving their difficulties and problems but being already on the new levels of cognition and morality. But the foundation of that future is being laid now. We strive to represent the future people as vivid and free, in the unity of their joys and cares, poetry and prose of their life. We are in no way satisfied with the primitive and unconvincing image of "people of the future", which can be observed in some works of literature and cinema. At the same time, we consider our work to be polemical with the many books and movies produced by the bourgeois world, which tend to see the future in an apocalyptic or technocratic way, affirming a sort of disbelief in the strength and capabilities of a human being.

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