Tarkovsky’s “Ivan’s Childhood” joins Fajr Classic Preserved lineup
TEHRAN -(Iranart)- Renowned Russian filmmaker Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky’s debut film “Ivan’s Childhood” will be screened in the Classics Preserved section of the 38th Fajr International Film Festival.
Produced In 1962, the film does not follow a chronological pattern of events, but rather presents frequent flashbacks at the front during World War II when the Germans were invading the Soviet Union.
Nikolay Burlyaev stars as Ivan Bondarev, a Soviet orphan during WWII, who works as a scout at the German frontlines forming a friendship with three other Soviet officers. Ivan seeks vengeance for his family members who were killed by the Nazis.
“Ivan’s Childhood” won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival as well as the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
In an article published in 2013, Dina Iordanova, a professor of film studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, quoted a comment by Tarkovsky saying, “The most beautiful memories are those of childhood.”
“Like Ivan’s, Tarkovsky’s childhood was spent during the war,” she noted.
Iordanova identifies the similarities between the film’s main character, Ivan, and the director’s personal life, in reference to Tarkovsky’s numerous private visions being depicted in the film’s scenery.
“In particular, he identified the images of the birch wood, the camouflage of birch branches on the first-aid post, the landscape in the background of the last dream, the lorry full of apples, and the horses wet with rain steaming in the sunshine as derived from his personal memories,” Iordanova stated.
Tarkovsky is considered as one of the most prominent directors of Russian cinema with a lofty status in the motion picture industry around the globe.
The Soviet-era Russian filmmaker and theorist won several awards at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Grand Prix Special du Jury and the Ecumenical Jury’s FIPRESCI award.
Earlier last week, the organizers of the Fajr festival announced that French director François Truffaut’s directorial debut “The 400 Blows” will also be reviewed in Classics Preserved, a non-competitive category of the event, which will take place in Tehran from May 26 to June 2.
source: Tehran Times