In 2011, Andrei Tarkovsky’s book “Imprinted Time” was translated into Ukrainian.
It contains the thoughts of the brilliant director on the problems of time, rhythm and editing, as well as on music and the actor in cinema. The book reveals an understanding of the essence of cinematic creativity, which, according to Tarkovsky, comes down to an attempt to capture the slipping time.
The director worked on the individual chapters that are included in this book for many years. The final version of the book was published about 30 years ago. And the fact that after all this time the book is published in translation into other languages is further proof that it, like Tarkovsky’s films themselves, has stood the test of time.
Real works of art do not solve problems, but ask them. The problems posed in the works of this director remain relevant, even decades later. This means that the issues of spirituality that Tarkovsky talks about have still not been resolved.
As the author of the translation of this book, Natalya Soboleva, noted, initially she did not set herself the task of translating Tarkovsky’s book into Ukrainian. When she taught at the Kiev National University of Theatre, Film and Television named after. Karpenka-Kary, then translated some quotes from this book in order to explain to Ukrainian-speaking students some aspects of the work of this director. Over time, these pieces of translation grew into a complete book.
A few quotes from the book:
“An artist begins when his own special figurative structure, his own system of thoughts about the real world arises in his plan or already in his film, and the director presents it to the viewer’s judgment, shares it with the viewer as his most cherished dreams. Only if he has his own view of things, becoming a kind of philosopher, does he act as an artist, and cinema as art.”
“To compare a person with an infinite environment, to compare him with an uncountable number of people passing by him and at a distance from him, to compare a person with the whole world – this is the meaning of cinema!”
“There are few brilliant people in cinema. Take Eisenstein, take Dovzhenko, take Buñuel or Kurosawa: each of them cannot be confused with anyone else. There is a direct path that such an artist follows, albeit at great expense, with weak points, even with far-fetched ideas – but all in the name of a single idea, concept.”