SOLARIS in HUMlab

HUMlab Science Fiction Movie Series 2010 kicks off next week with a
screening of Andrei Tarkovsky's SOLARIS!

Film: SOLARIS
Date: Thursday (18 March)
Venue: HUMlab
Time: 1700

(HUMlab is under the UB Library at Umeå University)

There will be discussion after the film, accompanied by light refreshments.

Tarkovsky’s films are today considered “seminal components of the Russian
cultural identity”; the seven feature films he made in his lifetime have
been called “a sacred septateuch on a par with the masterpieces of
Russia’s novelists and composers.” Ingmar Bergman has said that "Tarkovsky
for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language,
true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a
dream." At the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, SOLARIS won the Grand Prix
Spécial du Jury, the FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for the Palme d’Or.
The film was re-made by Steven Soderburgh in 2002, starring George Clooney
and Natascha McElhone.

Tarkovsky’s films are characterized by long, slow shots, pensive
contemplation of grandiose themes (life, death, love, technology,
homeland) and extended periods of stillness, often stretched to the point
of breath-hold. In that sense, his films are not easy to watch and
fidgeting is almost inevitable. Yet, given some time and patience, they
can be utterly rewarding, even epiphanic: Tarkovsky writes of “the maze of
possibilities” in cinema, which he searches “to be able to find myself,
fully and independently, within it.” The word “profound” is overused; the
intensities of Tarkovsky’s films are stirred in depths, where the tiniest
ripple takes a while to spread and be discerned. One just has to give it
time.

For more information, including film notes, visit http://sf.humlab.umu.se/.