Back when the Berkeley Public Library was the hub of my social universe, I spent a lot of time in its video room — in the mid-90's, it occupied a little corner of the basement — working my way through its extensive collection of foreign VHS movies. I had plenty of time on my hands, (also, no money), and I quickly exhausted the canon — Metropolis, The Seven Sumarai, Jules & Jim, Breathless and a lot of Godard. At some desperate point, I explored what were to me, at the time, the margins — Fassbinder, Jacques Tati, Andrei Tarkovsky, all of which were astounding, like gold, but Tarkovsky was the most revelatory. The library had Solaris, Nostalghia and Stalker, all of which twisted my noodle with their bizzare, dream-like, surreal sequences. I just discovered that Thames & Hudson has published a stunning collection of Tarkovsky's polaroids, taken of his family and travels. The Guardian displays of number of them here.
