films as if they were vegetable gardens

images of water in nostalghia 1983, andrei tarkovsky.

one doesn't need to explain in film, but rather to directly affect the feelings of the audience. it is this awakened emotion that then drives the thoughts forward. i am seeking a principle of montage that will allow me to expose the subjective logic-the thought, the dream, the memory-instead of the logic of the subject. page 11

he (dovzhenko) made his films as if they were vegetable gardens, as if they were gardens. he would water them himself, he would make everything grow with his own hands....his love of the land and of the people made his characters grow, as it were, from the earth itself. they were organic, complete. i would very much like to resemble him in this respect. page 21

in paris, i have asked to meet bresson. we have nothing in common, but he's one of the best directors i know. i want to see him, to see his face, to see how he talks. i have no questions to ask him, he himself suffices for me... he uses very few means of expression, nobody ever has reached such a degree of asceticism. page 45

i would like to film a scene against a window or a veranda with panes of glass that reflect the sun as it is setting. i already know that it takes five minutes for the sun to set. then i would like the characters to speak their lines while the sun is setting so that very slowly the light in the windows will get dimmer and then go out. one moment the sun is there, and then five minutes later it is night. page 48

it would probably be great not to make films, but instead to simply describe them to blind people. a wonderful idea! one would only need to buy a tape recorder. "thought expressed is a lie," said the poet. page 52

my objective is to create my own world and these images which we create mean nothing more than the images which they are. we have forgotten how to relate emotionally to art: we treat it like editors, searching in in for that which the artist has supposedly hidden. it is actually much simpler than that, otherwise art would have no meaning. you have to be a child-incidentally children understand my pictures very well, and i haven't met a single serious critic who could stand knee-high to those children. we think that art demands special knowledge; we demand some higher meaning from an author, but the work must act directly on our hearts or it has no meaning at all. page 67

water is a mysterious element, a single molecule of which is very photogenic, it can convey movement and a sense of change and flux. there will be a lot of it in nostalgia. maybe it has subconscious echoes-perhaps my love of water arises from some atavistic memory or some ancestral transmigration. page 75

from andrei tarkovsky: interviews, 2006

(more to come)