Tarkovsky through the mirror of his followers

In late May – early June Ivanovskaya Region will host the 6th cinema festival ‘Mirror’, dedicated to the memory of Andrei Tarkovsky. Distinguished guests from Russia, US, GB, Greece, Poland, Korea, Iran, Finland, Italy and many other countries have visited previous ‘Mirror’ Festivals.

Pavel Lungin, film director, the festival’s president

First of all I would like to say that this year is a special one: it is the 80th anniversary of Andrei Tarkovsky, it is the anniversary of the film ‘Ivan’s Childhood’ and the 40th anniversary of the Cannes award of ‘Solaris’. All these anniversaries happen to be in the same year, so this festival is particularly important for us. So we’ve undertaken a great deal of effort in order to broaden the program, to increase the festival’s international significance.

Mikhail Men, the governor of Ivanovskaya Region, the head of the ‘Mirror’ organizing committee

I would like to inform you of certain changes that will take place this year. First of all, we will conduct the opening ceremony not in our capital city, Ivanovo, but in the town of Plyos, on the river bank. I won’t give all the surprises away now, though. There is a number of reasons for such a change: first of all, Ivanovo is a big city, and when we are conducting the opening ceremony there, that hampers the traffic and causes certain discontent among the city residents. The second reason is that Plyos is a very beautiful historical city on the Volga, and it is worthy of attracting as many tourists as possible. We always include this town in the festival’s program, but it will be the first time that it will host the opening ceremony. And I would like to know your opinion afterwards: was it a good idea and should we carry on in this direction? All the rest will be the same, the films will be demonstrated in different cities and towns of our district – Ivanovo, Shuya, Kineshma and others, we will also organize meetings with the artists and directors – these are the events most anticipated by our residents. During such an event all the movie theatres are full in the Ivanovo Region, even though the films demonstrated are rather complicated and hard to understand. I don’t think that even Moscow could boast such popularity of auteur cinema. I think what they say is true: culture has its roots in the provinces. We will have the traditional tour to the town of Yuryevets, where the Tarkovsky family used to live. There’s the house-museum of the family there, and also last year we opened a cultural center.

Andrei Plakhov, chief manager of the festival

It is true that this special year should be marked by a special festival. First of all, we were very attentive while picking the films for the competition program. It wasn’t too easy for a number of reasons. Even though there are a lot of films or film directors who follow in Tarkovsky’s steps and develop the auteur theory in the cinema, I didn’t want to literally follow this path of post-Tarkovsky films. There are a lot of young talented directors who imitate Tarkovsky, but it’s not always so good. I think the program should be diverse, it should present different cultures, different genres. All these different films put together should give one a feeling of the energy of modern cinema – cinema that has a great contribution from Tarkovsky. As for the immediate examples of Tarkovsky’s influence on modern cinema, we decided to put such films in a special program, the “Tarkovsky Contest”. It existed before, but we used to put old classical films that influenced Tarkovsky and were adored by him there, for example, the Seven Samurai or Buñuel films. But the supply of such films has its limit, so we decided to include other films in the “Tarkovsky Contest”, films by major modern directors which have already become classics but which also exhibit a direct connection to the spirit of Tarkovsky’s works. This year we picked two directors: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, an outstanding Turkish director, Cannes festival winner, and Carlos Reygadas, a director from Mexico who has also participated in the Cannes festival more than once.

These two artists have learned a lot from Tarkovsky, you can see it in their films, but it is not blind imitation, it is a creative interpretation of his heritage, it is a confession of love for their favourite director. Both these directors plan to come to our festival, and we await them with anticipation.

We invited the famous French actress Carole Bouquet to be the head of the jury. She’s a big fan of Tarkovsky, and despite her glamorous image she’s a very smart woman. He first role in the cinema was in a Buñuel film. She says her favourite film of all is The Sacrifice by Tarkovsky. She even asked us to sent her DVDs with all Tarkovsky's films. And all her other film preferences show that she’s an intellectual. Other members of the jury are Andrei Zvyagintchev, he doesn’t need an introduction, he is one of the directors that have made a great contribution to the auteur theory, but let’s not draw direct parallels between his works and those of Tarkovsky, even though they are definitely connected; Roger Christian, art and film director, who has won an Oscar more than once, he worked on ‘Alien’ and ‘Star Wars’, but he himself prefers a completely different type of cinema, including Tarkovsky, and now he’s working on a film after Stanislav Lem’s novel; the German actor Johannes Zeiler, who stars in the latest Sokurov film Faust, and Vladis Bagdonas, an actor from Lithuania, whom you could have seen in the latest picture by Lungin, The Conductor. Finally, I would like to say that Alexander Sokurov is also invited to the Festival as a special guest, and he will be awarded a prize for ‘contribution to the cinema’.