Watch: Tarkovsky Behind the Scenes of The Sacrifice
A newly restored print of Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice wraps its run at BAM tonight, so now’s as good a time as any to take in Directed by Tarkovsky. A compilation of 50+ hours of behind the scenes footage shot by d.p. Arne Carlsson, along with excerpts from Tarkovsky’s book Sculpting in Time, editor Michal Leszczylowski’s documentary is an insightful window into the Russian great’s exacting process. Especially intriguing is his language barrier work with the actors, of whom he writes, “Cinema demands the truth of a state of mind that cannot be concealed, and the director has to induce the right state of mind in the actor…by various means, it could depend upon the circumstances of the set and on the particular personality of the individual actor you’re working with…in a form that is right only for him.”