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cinema lit visual

Andrei Tarkovsky's family polaroids

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.

Andrei Tarkovsky - polaroid - Procession
Lots more at this blog. In Russ­ian, too. Nice.