Tarkovsky takes Brazil

Our good friend Dmitry Trakovsky won a special mention jury award at the 2008 Mostra film festival in São Paulo, Brazil last week. Congratulations to you Dima!
Here are some links to Brazilian festival coverage and reviews.

http://www.mostra.org/32/exib_jornal.php?jornalId=608&language=en

Jornal da mostra

• 
• 32ª Mostra > 23/10/2008

Edition: Renata de Almeida and Leon Cakoff

Dmitry Trakovsky

Poetic Identification, The Means to Enjoy Tarkovsky

Son of Russian poet Arseniy Tarkovsky and one of the most important filmmakers in Russia since Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky is often admired by those that identify with the poetic rhythm of his films, since without this identification his work can at times be seen as slow and difficult. That is what Dmitry Trakovsky, the director of Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky, said in an interview to journalist Rubens Ewald Filho in the Clube da Mostra on Tuesday, October 21st.

In spite of their similar last names, Dmitry explained that he is not related to Tarkovsky. Born in Russia, the young filmmaker lives in the US and, even though he does not often visit his native country, he still maintains strong spiritual ties with his motherland. He could not pinpoint an exclusive reason why he identifies with Tarkovsky´s work, but he did emphasize that he likes the rhythm and the language of his films.

Dmitry, who once studied to become a doctor, explained that American universities offer students the possibility to take courses in parallel to their majors. This system led him to study Buddhism. After completing a short film on the subject, his professor encouraged him to apply for a grant to further pursue filmmaking. This funding laid the foundation of the documentary, Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky.

Dmitry said that Tarkovsky preferred to use long takes because he believed that time is the fundamental fabric of cinema. Mirror, from 1975, is Tarkovsky´s film that Dmitry admires the most, as he believes this to be the director’s most personal and poetic work. Conversely, Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Tarkovsky’s first film, is Dmitry’s least favorite because, as Tarkovsky would admit himself, it did not yet completely reflect the poetic language developed later on in his work.

The young filmmaker took three years to complete the documentary, and tried to investigate the idea, proclaimed by Tarkovsky, that death does not exist. Dmitry’s next project is to make fiction, maybe in a short film.

http://cinema.uol.com.br/ultnot/2008/10/21/ult6887u19.jhtm

21/10/2008 - 15h14

Documentário investiga a permanência do cineasta Andrei Tarkovsky

NEUSA BARBOSA
Especial para o UOL

Dmitry Trakovsky faz sua estréia como cineasta com o documentário "Conhecendo Andrei Tarkovsky"

O plano do estudante Dmitry Trakovsky, russo emigrado para aos EUA aos 2 anos, com seus pais, era estudar Medicina. Na própria universidade, na Califórnia, porém, o cinema desviou-o desse caminho. Ele acabou estreando como cineasta com o documentário "Conhecendo Andrei Tarkovsky", que tem sua première mundial na 32ª. Mostra Internacional de Cinema.

As coincidências foram muitas até chegar ao filme, a começar pelo sobrenome do jovem cineasta, quase igual ao de seu ídolo, Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), prestigiado diretor de "Solaris" (72), "Stalker" (79) e "O Sacrifício" (86).

http://www.mostra.org/32/exib_jornal.php?jornalId=626&language=en

and a blog entry in Portuguese
http://andreavelloso.blogspot.com/2008/10/meeting-andrei-tarkovsky.html

Tarkovsky by Trakovsky

Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский

Our latest project literally walked in off the street one day.

A recent UC Santa Cruz graduate, a Russian American kid named Dmitry called one afternoon recently to ask for advice. He wanted to know how to get his film post produced and into film festivals. [Oh god, not another film student first-time filmmaker...looking for free advice, somehow always available.] Time for tough love. "Forget it...don't bother...don't waste my time."

Except.

This kid wasn't calling about a hypothetical film. He'd actually already gone out and spent a year shooting, editing, and writing and recording his voiceover and made a perfectly presentable DVD screener...with original cover art. I was impressed. Dmitry takes us on a mission to learn who Tarkovksy is, and what the filmmaker meant when he asked in his long long films if death really exists.

And get this...he's not even a film student. Former pre-med.

So I watched [selectively] his screener, and we figured out what else needed to be done to raise it to the next professional level. Oh and I'm a UCSC alum too, and I am 75% Russian-American. But I freely admitted to Dmitry that Solaris put me to sleep when I first saw it when I worked as a projectionist in an arthouse cinema in the early 70s. (I liked Space Oddity more) And I had a hard time with Andrei Rublev when I got around to watching it in the 90s.

The new 90 minute film is called "Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky..." ballsy title considering that Tarkovsky died when young Dmitry was just 1.

Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky (the filmmaker's site)

http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=34

http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=164