RUSSIA: Foreign archive of dissident Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky returns home

Record ID: 402420

  • Title: RUSSIA: Foreign archive of dissident Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky returns home
  • Date: 19th February 2013
  • Summary: MOSCOW, RUSSIA (FEBRUARY 18, 2013) (REUTERS) NEWS CONFERENCE ON ANDREY TARKOVSKY ARCHIVE IN PROGRESS (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) MARINA TARKOVSKAYA, SISTER OF ANDREY TARKOVSKY, SAYING: "This archive is valuable, precious for me - his voice, if we put it on, his ideas, if we follow how they develop. This is all very interesting and very important, especially for those working in
  • Embargoed: 6th March 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Russian Federation
  • Country: Russia
  • Topics: Arts
  • Reuters ID: LVABH8929JRTHZ38Z4GYSZI7IZ09
  • Story Text: The Andrei Tarkovsky museum receives the personal archive of the Soviet dissident filmmaker acquired at Sotheby's in London.


    The museum of Andrey Tarkovsky, the world-renowned Soviet dissident film director, received his personal archive which the regional government acquired at Sotheby's in London for 1.3 million pounds (about 2 million U.S. dollars).
    A crate full of Tarkovsky's personal journals, letters, audio tapes and photographs has been delivered by the Russian Customs representative to Tarkovsky's childhood home, now his museum, in a small town of Yuryevets in the Ivanovo region in central Russia.
    "This archive is valuable, precious for me - his voice, if we put it on, his ideas, if we follow how they develop. This is all very interesting and very important, especially for those working in cinema," said Tarkovsky's sister Marina at a news conference in Moscow on Monday (February 18) after the archive has been delivered to Yuryevets museum.
    Arguably the most important document in the archive is a draft of a letter Tarkovsky wrote to Brezhnev about restrictions placed on his medieval epic Andrei Rublyev.
    Based on the life of the famous Russian icon painter, the movie was not screened publicly in the Soviet Union for several years after it first appeared at the Cannes film festival in 1969 because of its themes of religion and artistic freedom.
    The archive was sold by Tarkovsky's friend and pupil Olga Surkova and attracted over 20 bidders and well exceeded the asking price of 100,000 pounds (155,000 thousand U.S. dollars).
    "The price of it, which perhaps is not worth talking about, indeed seemed too high to our public. But I think we should not look negatively at the owner of this collection. The press should definitely make note of it because she put the collection together, took care of it, treated it as a important and valuable materials. I should add that she came to Moscow and offered to sell it for a very modest amount. That fact was simply not widely known," Marina Tarkovskaya told media.
    The archive has been bought by the Ivanovo region authorities with the money donated by a group of rich Russian philanthropists.
    "It has not been hard at all to find philanthropists to acquire that archive. We just made an appeal to the people who understood what we were talking about, who understood how important it was to return that archive home to Russia. We had more than 20 philanthropists. When you can divide the amount (between them) it does not look like a huge amount for big business," said the governor of the Ivanovo region, Mikhail Men.
    Tarkovsky, who was born in the Ivanovo region in 1932, is considered one of Russia's greatest film makers and perhaps second only to Sergei Eisenstein in terms of Russian cinema.
    He directed such acclaimed movies as Andrei Rublyev, Solaris and The Mirror.
    Many leading film makers working today cite him as an inspiration, including award-winning compatriot Alexander Sokurov who knew Tarkovsky and is widely regarded as his heir.
    In 1982 he decided to leave the Soviet Union and shot Nostalgia in Italy and The Sacrifice in Sweden.
    The latter was his last movie. Tarkovsky was diagnosed with cancer in 1985 and died the following year in Paris aged 54.
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