New Print Of Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia Arriving At BAMcinematek’s Russian Cinema Now Series

While most of us here at The CriterionCast find our heart set with the titular Criterion Collection, Kino Lorber has quietly become just as influential a name in classic arthouse cinema and they may have just revealed one of their biggest gets to date.

The company, as part of BAMcinematek’s upcoming Russian Cinema Now lineup (set to run May 31-June 13), will be debuting a brand spanking new restoration of Andrei Tarkovsky’s legendary Nostalghia, marking the film’s 30^th Anniversary. Here’s more information about the film:

A metaphysical exploration of spiritual isolation and Russian identity, Tarkovsky’s (Solaris,

Stalker) penultimate film Nostalghia (1983) follows Russian expat and misanthropic poet Andrei

(Oleg Yankovsky, The Mirror) as he travels to Italy to conduct research on an 18th-century

composer. In the course of his study, he is overcome by melancholy and a longing for his home

country—a sentiment reflective of the exiled Tarkovsky’s own struggle with displacement, this

being his first film made outside of the USSR (the film’s Italian title translates as “homesickness”).

At its Cannes debut, Nostalghia won Tarkovsky the prize for Best Director as well as the Grand

Prix du cinéma de création, an award he shared with Robert Bresson, but the Soviet government

prevented the film from winning the Palme d’Or. With music by Debussy, Wagner, Verdi, and

Beethoven, Tarkovsky’s “relentlessly poetic” (Vincent Canby, The New York Times) late

masterwork also features stunning black-and-white flashback sequences. Nostalghia is a Kino

Lorber release.

Arguably the biggest premiere during this festival, other films include Alexander Sokurov’s Faust and Victor Ginzburg’s Generation P, and a cavalcade of other fantastic Russian pictures. Throughout film history, Russian cinema has proven to be one of the most interesting filmic landscapes around, and the likes of Sokurov and particularly the man getting all the headlines, Tarkovsky, have proven that throughout the years.

Now, no home video plans for this restoration have been revealed, but the fact that Kino Lorber is behind the film means that this is bound to be one hell of a release. They’ve been behind such releases as the recent Blu-ray release of Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice, and they have become one of the biggest names in all of home video. Hopefully this can follow suit.

Source BAM