Arquivo

The third documentary of the Elegias series, centers on the person of Andrei Tarkovski (1932-1986), one of the most important film makers in the history of cinema, director of classics such as Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1974), Stalker (1979), and The Sacrifice (1986). Tarkovski was impressed with Sokúrov’s first feature, The Lonely Voice of Man (1978), and sent a letter of recommendation to the Lenfilm studio where Sokúrov was finally to be employed in 1980. Tarkovski, in turn, went into voluntary exile in Florence, in Italy. “My task in this film was to establish a human approximation in relation to the memory and to the personality of this great film maker. I did not intend to broach all of the aspects of his life, but only to talk about what his legacy was to Russia and what occurred to him in the west where he found himself obliged to work”, says Sokúrov. Moscow Elegy was to be released to coincide with Tarkovski’s fiftieth birthday in 1982; however, the production was interrupted for a long time owing to censorship.