Sean Martin > Quotes

“During his time at VGIK, Tarkovsky and his fellow students studied all aspects of filmmaking, watching the classics of Soviet cinema and taking part in workshops in which they would demonstrate their technical ability. This even included acting; Tarkovsky’s fellow student and friend, Alexander Gordon, remembers him giving a superb performance as the aging Prince Bolkonsky when Romm got the students to perform scenes from War and Peace during their third year at VGIK. Tarkovsky saw many classics from outside the Soviet Union, including Citizen Kane, the films of John Ford and William Wyler, and the works of the fathers of the French New Wave, Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo. Tarkovsky developed a personal pantheon that included Bergman, Bunuel, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa, Fellini and Antonioni. The only Soviet director who made it into his pantheon was Dovzhenko, although he was good friends with the Georgian director Sergei Parajanov, whom he regarded as ‘a genius in everything’. He also spoke highly of Iosseliani, and, on occasion, of Boris Barnet. But above them all was the towering figure of Robert Bresson, whom Tarkovsky regarded as the ultimate film artist.”
― Sean Martin, Andrei Tarkovsky

“Before time and space began, the true God existed in a realm known as the Pleroma, which means fullness, together with a female divine principle, known as Ennoia, or Thought. The true God does not create, but rather emanates, which is to say that things come forth from him. In other words, rather than the true God saying ‘Let there be light’, as the God of the Old Testament does, light comes forth from the true God as if it were breath; it is not deliberate, willed creation. A series of emanations resulted in the creation of a number of divine figures known as aeons. Central to the idea of emanation is that each successive emanation is somewhat lesser than that from which it emanated, like the ripples on the surface of a pond after a stone has been dropped into the middle of it, with the ripples in the centre of the pond being closer to the stone than the ones at the pond’s edge. Sophia, the Wisdom of God, being the youngest of the aeons, is also therefore the furthest from God, and it was through her desire to know the true God that an emanation came forth from her without the knowledge or participation of her male consort (all the aeons having partners). This emanation produced the dark chaos which was to become matter, but at this stage was a soulless place, ‘limitless darkness and bottomless water’.40 Gnostic texts describe it as an abortion. Sophia, being disturbed by the darkness, decided to create a being to rule over it and breathed life into an androgynous, lion-faced being known as Ialdabaoth, a word which could mean either ‘begetter of the heavenly powers’ (i.e., ‘creator of the world’) or ‘childish god’.”
― Sean Martin, The Gnostics: The First Christian Heretics

“Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–86) was a part of the generation of Soviet filmmakers that emerged during the Khrushchev Thaw years, which also saw the emergence of such directors as Otar Iosseliani, Sergei Parajanov and Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky. Tarkovsky made only seven full-length films, yet this slender oeuvre has established him as the most important and well-known Russian director since Eisenstein.”
― Sean Martin, Andrei Tarkovsky

“Despite these supposedly stringent controls, however, the system was hampered by one major factor: during the mid to late 1950s, the Soviet film industry began expanding at an almost exponential rate, epitomised by the international success of Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes are Flying, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1957.
This resurgence owed a lot to the 20th Party Congress in 1956, at which Khrushchev denounced Stalinism, thereby precipitating the ‘Thaw’ that initiated the most liberal cultural climate in the Soviet Union for 30 years. The film industry thrived as a result. In 1955, 65 features were produced; by the early 1960s, this had risen to over 100 per year. Cinemas likewise doubled in number, from 59,000 in 1955 to 118,000 in 1965. Aside from Kalatozov, other directors rose to prominence
between the late fifties and mid sixties, such as Elem Klimov, Larissa Shepitko and Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, and the only two Soviet directors Tarkovsky professed to admire, Otar Iosseliani and Sergei Parajanov.”
― Sean Martin, Andrei Tarkovsky

“around one third of all cancers. Processed food, a lack of fruit and vegetables, too much salt and alcohol, are all viewed with the same suspicion that corsets were once subjected to, but with stronger scientific data to back”
― Sean Martin, A Short History of Disease