A director reveals the original inspirations for his films, their history, his methods of work, and the problems of visual creativity

"Tarkovsky for me is the greatest," wrote Ingmar Bergman. Andrey Tarkovsky only made seven films, but all are celebrated for its striking visual images, quietly patient dramatic structures, and visionary symbolism. Time within Time is both a diary and a notebook, maintained by Tarkovsky from 1970 until his death. Intense and intimate, it offers reflections on Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, and others. He writes movingly of his family, especially his father, Arseniy Tarkovsky, whose poems appear in his films. He records haunting dreams in detail and speaks of the state of society and the future of art, noting significant world events and purely personal dramas along with fascinating accounts of his own filmmaking. Rounding out this volume are Tarkovsky's plans and notes for his stage version of Hamlet; a detailed proposal for a film adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot; and a glimpse of the more public Tarkovsky answering questions put to him by interviewers.

A collection of interviews with the Russian filmmaker who directed Andrei Roublev, Solaris, and The Mirror

Andrey Tarkovsky was the most important Russian filmmaker of the post-war era, and one of the world's most renowned cinematic geniuses. He directed the first five of his seven films - Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror and Stalker - in the Soviet Union, but in 1982 defected to Italy, where he made Nostalgia. His final film, The Sacrifice, was produced in Sweden in 1985. Tarkovsky's films are characterized by metaphysical themes, extended takes, an absence of conventional dramatical structure and plot, and a dream-like, visionary style of cinematography. They achieve a spiritual intensity and transcendent beauty that many consider to be without parallel. This book presents extended sequences of stills from each of the films alongside synopses and cast and crew listings. It includes reflections on Tarkovsky's work from fellow artists and writers including Jean-Paul Sartre and Ingmar Bergman, for whom Tarkovsky was 'the greatest, the one who invented a new language.' Extracts from Tarkovsky's own writings and diaries offer a wealth of insights into his poetic and philosophical views on cinematography, which he described as 'sculpting in time'. The book also reproduces many personal Polaroid photographs that confirm the extraordinary poetic vision of a great artist who died aged only 54, but who remains a potent influence on artists and filmmakers today.

A volume of sixty Polaroid photographs of the late Russian filmmaker's friends and family consists of images taken between 1979 and 1984 in his native land and Italy, where he spent time in political exile. Original.

The phenomenon of time was a central preoccupation of Tarkovsky throughout his career. His films present visions of time by temporal means - that is, in time. Tarkovsky does not represent time through coherent argument, Nariman Skakov proposes, rather he presents it and the viewer experiences the argument. This book explores the phenomenon of spatio-temporal lapse in Tarkovsky's cinema - from Ivan's Childhood (1962) to Sacrifice (1986). Dreams, visions, mirages, memories, revelations, reveries and delusions are phenomena which present alternative spatio-temporal patterns; they disrupt the linear progression of events and create narrative discontinuity. Each chapter is dedicated to the discussion of one of Tarkovsky's seven feature films and in each, one of these phenomena functions as a refrain. Skakov discusses the influence of the flow of and lapses in space and time on the viewer's perception of the Tarkovskian cinematic universe. He opens and closes his original and fascinating book on Tarkovsky's cinema by focusing on the phenomenon of time that is discussed extensively by the filmmaker in his main theoretical treatise Sculpting in Time, as well as in a number of interviews and public lectures.

In this spellbinding book, the man described by the Daily Telegraph as 'possibly the best living writer in Britain' takes on his biggest challenge yet: unlocking the film that has obsessed him all his adult life. Like the film Stalker itself, it confronts the most mysterious and enduring questions of life and how to live.