Perspective

Author Andrey Tarkovsky was a Russian filmmaker and theorist. As a film student in the Russian system, at the State Institute of Cinematography, he was steeped in Russian cinema and exposed to the great Russian filmmakers of the twenties and thirties, such as Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin. He directed a thesis film, then directed several feature-length films, starting with Ivan's Childhood.

Tarkovsky relies on his theoretical understanding of film, as well as his practical experience with working and directing on many film sets. He supports his ideas on the essence of art and cinema with examples from his own career as well as artists and works he admires. He shows himself to be forever curious and ever-evolving in terms of his films. Tarkovsky admits that Ivan's Childhood was the result of experimenting with different techniques. At that point, Tarkovsky was still determining whether or not he had...