Podrobná esej amerického rusisty Roberta Birda o kultovním snímku Andreje Tarkovského, která zeširoka zkoumá různé stránky filmu: jeho historii, okolnosti vzniku, vazby na dějiny ruského (sovětského) umění, různé verze scénáře a střihu. Na závěr analyzuje jednotlivé scény a pokouší se o jejich interpretaci. Knihu doprovází přibližně 70 fotoilustrací.

The masters of Russian arts and letters are a prestigious fraternity that includes such renowned artists as Tolstoy, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich. But alongside these luminaries stands a lesser-known but equally revered figure, filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Robert Bird offers in Andrei Tarkovsky an unprecedented investigation of Tarkovsky s oeuvre and its far-reaching influence on world cinema.
Bird brings a novel approach to his dissection of Tarkovsky s wholly original techniques and sensibilities, arranging the films into elemental categories of Water, Fire, Earth, and Air....

16 contributions are published in Russian and 14 contributions in English.
This volume is published in celebration of the seventieth birthday of Tomas Venclova, Lithuanian poet, literary scholar, essayist on contemporary culture and politics of Eastern Europe, and professor of Russian literature at Yale University. Thomas Venclova is one of the towering figures of contemporary intellectual and cultural life. A passionate proponent of human rights and member of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, he also made a substantial contribution to the liberation of Eastern Europe....