Tarkovsky, Andrey

Tarkovsky, Andrey (1932-1986), Russian film-maker. Tarkovsky, the son of the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, grew up in the artists' colony of Peredelkino, near Moscow. After studying at the state film school VGIK during the “Thaw” period that followed the death of Stalin, he graduated in 1960 and was quickly invited to salvage a film in crisis. A World War II story about a boy spy, as Ivan's Childhood it won the Venice Festival's Golden Lion in 1962 and launched Tarkovsky as the leader of a new generation of Soviet film-makers.

Tarkovsky's next project was an ambitious panorama of medieval Russia, centred on the mysterious figure of a great icon painter. However, Tarkovsky's vision proved both too earthy and too reverent, so Andrei Rublev, although made between 1964 and 1966, was not released until 1971. A science-fiction story, Solaris (1972), met with fewer obstacles while continuing Tarkovsky's spiritual quest. The Mirror (1974) used fragmentary memories from his childhood and his father's poems to create a deeply personal statement that is also the biography of a generation. He returned to a science-fiction source for The Stalker (1979), which emerged as a frankly religious allegory and sharpened the conflict between the Soviet authorities and Tarkovsky's growing international audience.

After working in Italy on Nostalgia (1983), a film about a modern Russian researching the life of an 18th-century Russian composer who had returned home only to commit suicide, Tarkovsky announced publicly that he would not return to the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. As his fame grew, a collection of writings appeared, and in 1986 he made his last film, in Sweden, The Sacrifice, as an international co-production. Tarkovsky's death in exile shocked the Russian film community and he was mourned at a series of events that helped to topple the Soviet bureaucracy. A prize named after him was awarded to the animator Yuri Norstein in 1989.