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Evgueny Tsymbal
Film director, art historian, conference organizer
Dear friends!
Six years ago, in 2007, The first Ivanovo International Academic Conference “Andrey Tarkovsky Phenomenon in Intellectual and Artistic Culture” attached to the “Zerkalo” Film Festival took place, organized by the author of these lines and Doctor of Philosophy Viacheslav Okeansky.
At the end of the Conference all participants and media people stressed its urgency, representativeness and high academic level. All the presentations were published in a separate book. The Conference received a wide public response and attracted attention of researchers, journalists, internet community both in Russia and abroad. It promoted interest to Andrey Tarkovsky’s personality and creative work and initiated a number of new works on non-standard and vital issues of his biography and artistic approach. Unfortunately for a number of reasons unrelated to organizers similar conferences were not held at the later festivals.
This year the decision was taken to get back to the practice of holding academic conferences during the “Zerkalo” festival. The decision is obviously welcomed. Tarkovsky’s creative work set the highest standards and made benchmarks in artistic practices, fostered the search for new expressive means; Tarkovsky’s work exemplifies loyalty to arts, moral quest, independent outlook, the artist’s right to have one’s own view of the world, resistance to vulgarity, ideological dogmas and speculations. Complemented by the Moscow readings («Andrey Tarkovsky. Context — 2012 и 2013), the Ivanovo Conference assists in developing a stable community of filmmakers, academics, culture experts, art workers, philosophers and just fans of Andrey Tarkovsky.
Time is a sober and impartial judge. It separates the grains of talent and mind from the husk of fussy desire to be liked at any rate, pander to base tastes, be favored by strong and rich of this world. After Andrey Tarkovsky’s death tens of thousands of movies were shown on the screen, thousands of them met a loud but short-lived success. Time relentlessly relegated them to oblivion.
In the meantime Tarkovsky’s movies – the highest achievements of the world cinema — confirmed their status of incontestable classics.
