“Deserves a big-screen viewing, with its smorgasbord of memories in dream, drama and newsreel form from the life of a dying poet.” - Kate Muir, Times
“The smallest details (a stammering child, the wrinkle in the turned page of a book) stick like burrs, and we are left to wonder if any director has delved with more modesty and honesty into the heartbreak of the past.” - Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
Sunday, February 16, 2:00 p.m. & Saturday, February 22, 7:00 p.m. | What Tarkovsky film doesn’t have at least a little something to do with memory? In MIRROR, the memories and dreams of the dying Soviet poet Aleksei are woven into a meditative, nonlinear narrative as he reflects on his childhood, his relationship with his mother, and his marriage. Tarkovsky weaves together loosely related vignettes and Soviet newsreels and employs radical shifts in texture and color to explore one man’s memories, but also the universality of memory—how it can be elusive and fallible, haunt us or comfort us. An exploration of the human experience and a visual feast, MIRROR is a rich and rewarding cinematic poem.
Persistence of Memory: Ten films (poetically, all quite memorable) that explore recollection, unreliable narrators and amnesiatic protagonists, ghosts real and imagined, the way others remember us (ouch), and the coming to terms with that, as much as we try to hold on to them, as time passes our memories shift and slip away. Read more
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu