If I had to list my favourite filmmakers every month the list would be different every month, but I love this crop of ten filmmakers from all around the globe more than most. I love them so much I’ve spent the evening making mosaics of pretty images from their films for you to enjoy. Back in film school the course I hated the most (and which consequently stayed with me and affected me more deeply than the ones that I enjoyed) was film theory. I remember making a presentation on an essay by Roland Barthes in which he posited that stills from films are actually more cinematic than moving images. I should really dig it up and reread it, but off the top of my head his premise still stinks of bullshit to me. Anyway, the cinematic quality of the stills I’ve collected here is certainly undeniable.
Andrei Tarkovsky made seven astonishing feature films including my all-time fave, Stalker (1979). The son of a celebrated Russian poet, Tarkovsky became known as a poet of the cinema for his mystic mise-en-scene, which he developed into both a technique and eventually a posthumous book on film and art theory called Sculpting in Time.
He rejected Eisenstein, his predecessor in the Soviet tradition of theorist-filmmakers; rather than constructing meaning through montage, he located the unique quality of film as a medium in the rhythm of time flowing through each shot. He manipulated this “time pressure” in long (sometimes long, long) takes that produced some of the most hallucinatory, dreamlike sequence shots ever created. Few filmmakers are credited with creating a new film language, a feat which Tarkovksy certainly accomplished. Twenty-five years after his death that language echoes in the work of many of the greatest living auteurs: Alfonso Cuaron, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Carlos Reygadas to name a few.
A selection of polaroids from his private collection has been published and digitized. While these slivers of time cannot express his central preoccupation with temporal fluidity, they nevertheless bear his unmistakable fingerprints. That unique touch is evident in the composition, choice of subject matter, and most of all in the lighting.
Through Tarkovsky’s lens the world is bathed in an eternal mist. The light hangs in the air, always palpable, a physical manifestation of the spiritual foundation of his perception. Indeed, looking through the collection of polaroids, one might picture Tarkovsky as a man surrounded by ethereal vapour wherever he went. Or maybe he deliberately filmed in the early morning to create the intended effect. Or maybe Russia is simply always shrouded in fog, just as Tarkovsky would have us believe that its architecture is perpetually crumbling and overgrown, always haunted by the echo of water dripping into a bucket.
“For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged by an overriding passion.” - Sculpting in Time
“Never try to convey your idea to the audience – it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.” – Sculpting in Time
