Screening the Revelation: Bill Viola — Andrei Tarkovsky

The article is devoted to the problem of generating symbolic content in contemporary art. The problem is directly related to the vitality of art itself, which depends on the ability to create a universal picture of the world. In the art of the 20th century, the process of replacing symbolism with symptomatology begins, which gradually leads to a narrowing of the sphere of the symbolic content of culture, since ambiguous symbols are replaced by completely unambiguous symptoms or signs of a particular traumatic problems. This process is associated with the materialization of the symbolic and, in general, with the strengthening of the materialist dominant in the culture of the 1920s–1960s. The article examines the problem of the embodiment of symbols using the example of the work of film director Andrei Tarkovsky and video artist Bill Viola, who largely inherited Tarkovsky in the 1980s–2010s. The comparative analysis is based on the works of Tarkovsky and Viola, in which both masters strive to create moments of revelation. These symbolic moments, Goethe and his interpreter, the philosopher Karen Swassjan, call the revelations of the unsearchable — the universal, open in the private. Tarkovsky and Viola strive to create such moments on the screens, most often resorting to showing the interaction of the characters with the symbolic elements of fire and water. Also, both of them reconstructed different European paintings of the Renaissance and Baroque as a reserve of symbolic. Their search is not always successful precisely because of the substitution of a symbolic image for a symptomatic one: replacement of the unsearchable or unimaginable with scenes of dreams or hallucinosis. However, the search for Tarkovsky and Viola is so intense that the very ambiguity of the results is the most important symptom of the state of modern culture, testifying to a crisis in understanding the possibilities of representation. Turning to screen art, to that form of life that becomes structure-forming, both Viola and Tarkovsky strive to recreate in it the possibility of revelation, the presence of a supermaterial image that opens a saving life path.

Slowness as a Strategy of the Contemporary through Films

In Future Studies and the History of Technology accelerating change is a perceived increase in the rate of technological change throughout history. This may suggest faster and more profound change in the future and may or may not be accompanied by equally profound social and cultural change. Responding to the accelerating technological landscape and contemporary life, this paper researches how the concept of ‘time’ plays a significant role. The author, an experimental filmmaker, charts an experiential journey within several pivotal ‘dream films’, along with relevant artists’ moving images in relation to time and slowness in the moving image as critical media. As contemporary life has become more and more fast paced, and one year on the impact of COVID-19 is still being felt, the idea of stillness is beginning to become a more desirable commodity. The author explores ‘slow cinema’, acknowledging seminal directors Andrei Tarkovsky and Claire Denis, as well as art films which frequently emphasise long takes, offering minimalist aesthetics with little or no narrative. In an endeavour to portray different temporalities and reveal and allude to the invisibility of time, the author relates to Julia Kristeva’s notions of intertextuality, transposition and time, and Lutz Koepnik’s concept of slowness as a strategy of the contemporary. The author discusses four ‘dream films’, where painterly, poetic, non-linear narratives, and ‘in-between’ spaces are played out: FRIDA Travels to Ibiza, Cycle, Llafarganu Papagei and Frock.

Review of A Christian Approach to Cinema: Tarkovsky. Film as Prayer

Elena Dulgheru. Tarkovsky. Film as Prayer (A Poetic of the Sacred in the Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky)/Romanian: Filmul ca rugăciune (O poetică a sacrului în cinematogaful lui Andrei Tarkovski)/, second edition, Arca Învierii Publishing House, 2020.

Lo jurodivyj in Nostalghia. Genesi ed evoluzione di Domenico nella sceneggiatura di Tarkovskij e Guerra

This article aims to analyze the evolution of Domenico’s character in the different versions of Nostalghia’s script, written by Andrei Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra. By comparing the director’s diaries with the twelve original typescripts kept in the Tarkovsky’s archive, it is possible to trace the origin and the evolution of the character, which has some similarities with the holy fool of Russian tradition. In the first versions of the script, in which the character is still vague and undefined, there are some quotes from Dostoevsky’s works that refer to the theme of madness. These references disappear in the latest versions, when Domenico begins to acquire more importance in the narrative and often expresses himself about madness with quotes from Guerra’s works.

O Espelho de Tarkovsky:

O Espelho (1975), terceiro longa-metragem de Andrei Tarkovsky, é considerado a sua obra mais pessoal. O desdobramento poético do filme é marginalmente narrativo na medida em que conta uma história através de fragmentos discursivos temporalmente desconjuntados que minam a continuidade narrativa. As vinhetas são, na sua maioria, dramatizações das lembranças do protagonista de acontecimentos infantis, sonhos e devaneios, que articulam uma lógica temporal que requer uma espacialização não convencional da narrativa para torná-la coerente. Na sua constelação analítica, discernimos uma dinâmica repetitiva de identificação empática como estratégia de engajamento com o espectador. Apontamos a labor iterativa do protagonista como a gagueira que espelha a luta do indivíduo para encontrar uma voz como expressão de uma identidade coletiva.

The Tradition of Christian Thought in The History of Russian Culture

This chapter highlights the most important characteristics of Russian religiosity and briefly describes the development of Russian religious thought from Russia’s adoption of Christianity in the tenth century up through the twentieth. It is emphasized that Russian religiosity strives to unite the divine and the earthly, in the interests of imparting to earthly reality a divine perfection. The author develops his view that Russian religious philosophy has always inclined towards the Gnostic version of Christianity, which denies the idea of the Fall and admits that the individual, as well as humanity as a whole, can achieve perfection in earthly life (i.e. the ‘Kingdom of God on Earth’ is possible). This point of view, first expressed by Pyotr Chaadaev, later became known as the concept of Godmanhood. Such a view lies at the centre of the philosophical outlook of the most famous Russian thinkers: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Vladimir Solovyov. The author argues that the main trend of twentieth-century Russian philosophy was to prove the crucial importance of Christianity for the proper development of civilization, while Christianity itself was understood by Russian thinkers (Nicolas Berdyaev, Semyon Frank, Lev Karsavin, Andrei Tarkovsky and others) as a teaching not so much about God as about the divine nature of man.