Tarkovski's examination of other directors' cinema under study

The second session will be held at Tabakalera on 12th May and will combine listening to a selection of the film maker's unpublished classes with further artistic initiatives connected with his work.

Julen Abasolo, Cristina Álvarez, Pilar Carrera, Xabier Erkizia, Till Fellner, Peppe Lanci, Adrian Martin and José Manuel Mouriño will take part in this event.

Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola will restart its public programme on 12th May with the second part of "Lost Lessons of Andréi Tarkovski ”, which makes fresh use of the cinema lectures which the film maker gave at different places around the Soviet Union between 1975 and 1981. This exceptional material, which consists of around 90 hours of sound recordings, has been found in Masha Chugunova's personal archive; for many years Chugunova accompanied Tarkovski to his lectures and conferences.

Watching films of recognised value, along with analysing them and discussing them, is a tool used frequently on all types of courses connected with the cinema. Andréi Tarkovski, too, made this an indispensable part of his teaching. However, all film makers' experiences are also linked with everything which they can find out about and learn as mere spectators. Tarkovski was no exception in this sense. The second of his lectures takes this idea as its starting point. The objective is to revive the way in which the director, by looking at others' work, stimulates and guides future film makers. Other aims of no lesser importance encouraged Tarkovski to use this exercise in observation and analysis: recommending paying attention to particular works of cinema as a way for students to learn to watch not only cinema, to distinguish what is essential to the medium.

So, at the next session (programme) the assistants  will hear Tarkovski's notes and observations about Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Aleksei German, Otar Iosseliani, Grigori Kozintsev, Lumière brothers, Sergei Parajanov, Andy Warhol and others. Amongst all of them, particular attention will be paid to Tarkovski's observations about Luis Buñuel's cinema. The session, which has been organized in conjunction with Andréi Tarkovski International Institute, Tabakalera, Musikene and Scherzo magazine, will take place at Tabakalera's Z Hall, and will be divided into two parts (11:00-14:00 and 16:00-19:00).

Second session programme

The session will be based around listening to a selection of sound fragments; once more, these will be previously unpublished fragments. In each of them Tarkovski analyses the work of various major film makers. The cinema "quotes", which here start dialogues with other types of specific creative work, come from three sessions held and recorded in 1977. While those original classes did not focus monographically on comparing the films and film makers in question (looking, rather, and the quotations which have now been rescued and reorganised), they were derived from diverse reasons, ranging from “the treatment of ‘the real’ in artistic environments” to ”the suitability of using symbols or not in cinema”; from ”divergences between cinema and theatre to be taken into account” to the challenge of adapting literary works for the cinema” to “ideas about experimental cinema”….

This second session will include the participation of cinema critics and essayists Cristina Álvarez and Adrian Martin, who will reflect on the information and dramatic role of ringing bells and the musical landscapes this creates in different films by Tarkovski, Bergman, Bresson, Buñuel and Parajanov (they will do so in a video-essay which shows different fragments from several of the films); Julen Abásolo, along with members of the Arientza Campanology School (Aretxabaleta) and sound artist Xabier Erkizia will play a symphony based of the sound of bells; Pilar Carrera, Vice Chancellor for Communication and Culture at Madrid's Carlos II University and author of Andrei Tarkovski. The Complete Image (Andrei Tarkovski La imagen total – Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009) who will talk about the cinema of both Tarkovski and Parajanov; well-known Austrian pianist Till Fellner, author of an essay about the use of music in Luis Buñuel's films (Subversion and Silence -Subversión y silencio- published in Spain in Scherzo magazine nº 326, February 2017), who will accompany his dissertation playing various pieces by Franz Schubert; Giuseppe Lanci, director of photography and frequent collaborator, amongst others, with, Marco Bellochio, Vittorio and Paolo Taviani, Nani Moretti and Tarkovski himself, with whom he shot Nostalghia in 1983; and José Manuel Mouriño, essayist, film makers and representative of the Tarkovski Institute in the Spanish State and one of the researchers into the rescued sound archives.

Access to the Z Hall will be open until the room is full, but people interested in taking part in this second session should book their places by writing to info@zine-eskola.eus.