— Ch. 1 · Childhood In The Taiga —
Andrei Tarkovsky.
~4 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was born on the 4th of April 1932 in the village of Zavrazhye. His father, Arseny Aleksandrovich Tarkovsky, worked as a poet and translator before leaving the family in 1937. The young boy spent his early years in Yuryevets with his mother Maria Ivanova Vishnyakova and sister Marina. During World War II, the family evacuated to Yuryevets to live with his maternal grandmother Vera Nikolayevna Vishnyakova. This period of displacement and the presence of his withdrawn father became central themes in his later work Mirror.
In 1950, Tarkovsky dropped out of his studies at the Oriental Institute to join a geological expedition. He traveled to the river Kureyka near Turukhansk in the Krasnoyarsk Province. The taiga environment shaped his artistic identity during this year-long research trip. He decided to study film after returning from this expedition in 1954. His time in the wilderness provided the raw material for his first unproduced screenplay Concentrate about a leader waiting for a boat that brings back concentrates collected by the expedition.
The Struggle For Rublev
Tarkovsky directed Andrei Rublev in 1966 about the life of the fifteenth-century Russian icon painter. Soviet authorities refused to release the film immediately after its completion due to conflicts over its content. The production had a budget of more than 1 million rubles which was a significant sum for that period. Tarkovsky had to cut the film several times resulting in different versions of varying lengths. It received wide release only in 1971 as a cut version.
Despite these restrictions the film won the FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969. A single screening occurred in Moscow in 1966 before the wider ban took effect. The struggle with state censorship defined much of his early career and forced him to navigate complex political landscapes while trying to preserve his artistic vision. This conflict would eventually lead to his departure from the Soviet Union years later.