 | |
| Author | Geoff Dyer |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Canongate Books |
Publication date | United Kingdom 2012 |
| Pages | 228pp. |
| ISBN | 9780857861665 |
Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room is a 2012 book by Geoff Dyer.
| | |
| Author | Geoff Dyer |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Canongate Books |
Publication date | United Kingdom 2012 |
| Pages | 228pp. |
| ISBN | 9780857861665 |
Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room is a 2012 book by Geoff Dyer.
The book is a discussion by Dyer of the film Stalker directed by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1979. The title is taken from the mysterious and enigmatic Zone which is a locus within the film itself. The work is based on a close, scene-by-scene reading with a large number of digressions, including autobiographical discussions such as the time and place where Dyer watched the film (and observations of how his own perspective has changed over time - for example he declares that as he has aged he has grown less and less concerned with trying to find a definite answer to what the film as a whole 'means'). The first time that he saw the film was in his early 20s having just finished his education in English literature at Oxford University. In part, therefore, the work is a meditation on time and how it changes our perspective on the world as a whole and on particular cultural artefacts and works of art. This is apposite, since one of Tarkovsky's most central preoccupations was that of time (he called his book on the process of making films Sculpting in Time ). Dyer refers to the long drawing-out of takes by Tarkovsky as being a manifestation of 'Tarkovsky time'. [1]
Early on in the process of writing the book Dyer considered a structure where he could divide up his discussion into the film's 142 shots, but instead discovered that his own lines of argument led off in tangents that prevented such a narrowly constructed work. The discursive and digressive structure of the work in a sense mirrors the journey undertaken by the characters in Tarkosky's film who try to gain access to an omnipotent 'Room' which has the power to grant all our wishes that is rumoured to lie at the centre of the Zone itself; a quest whose object seems to become further away as they advance and progress. [2] As well as general and universal themes regarding the human condition in the film, Dyer also discusses other ways in which it has often been interpreted, such as a depiction of the absurdities and confusion of life under late period Communism or a foreshadowing of the zones of exclusion set up during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. [3]
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, theatre director, writer, and film theorist. He is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential directors in the history of Russian and world cinema. His films explored spiritual and metaphysical themes, and are noted for their slow pacing and long takes, dreamlike visual imagery, and preoccupation with nature and memory.
The brothers Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky and Boris Natanovich Strugatsky were Soviet-Russian science fiction authors who collaborated through most of their careers.
Stalker is a 1979 Soviet science fiction art drama film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky with a screenplay written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, loosely based on their 1972 novel Roadside Picnic. The film combines elements of science fiction with dramatic philosophical and psychological themes.
The Sacrifice is a 1986 drama film written and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Starring Erland Josephson, it centers on a middle-aged intellectual who attempts to bargain with God to stop an impending nuclear holocaust. The Sacrifice was Tarkovsky's third film as a Soviet expatriate, after Nostalghia and the documentary Voyage in Time, and was also his last, as he died shortly after its completion. Like 1972's Solaris, it won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.
Ivan's Childhood, sometimes released as My Name Is Ivan in the US, is a 1962 Soviet war drama film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Co-written by Mikhail Papava, Andrei Konchalovsky and an uncredited Tarkovsky, it is based on Vladimir Bogomolov's 1957 short story Ivan. The film features child actor Nikolai Burlyayev along with Valentin Zubkov, Evgeny Zharikov, Stepan Krylov, Nikolai Grinko, and Tarkovsky's wife Irma Raush.
Roadside Picnic is a science fiction novel by Soviet-Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, written in 1971 and published in 1972. It is the brothers' most popular and most widely translated novel outside the former Soviet Union. As of 2003, Boris Strugatsky has counted 55 publications of "Picnic" in 22 countries.
The term "sociological imagination" was coined by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in his 1959 book The Sociological Imagination to describe the type of insight offered by the discipline of sociology. The term is used in introductory textbooks in sociology to explain the nature of sociology and its relevance in daily life.
Andrei Rublev is a 1966 Soviet biographical historical drama film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and co-written with Andrei Konchalovsky. The film was remade and re-edited from the 1966 film titled The Passion According to Andrei by Tarkovsky which was censored during the first decade of the Brezhnev era in the Soviet Union. The film is loosely based on the life of Andrei Rublev, the 15th-century Russian icon painter. The film features Anatoly Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko, Ivan Lapikov, Nikolai Sergeyev, Nikolai Burlyayev and Tarkovsky's wife Irma Raush. Savva Yamshchikov, a famous Russian restorer and art historian, was a scientific consultant of the film.
Anatoly Alekseyevich Solonitsyn was a Soviet and Russian actor, who was known for his roles in Andrei Tarkovsky's movies and he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 31st Berlin International Film Festival. He was born in Bogorodsk.
Nostalghia is a 1983 Soviet-Italian drama film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and starring Oleg Yankovsky, Domiziana Giordano, and Erland Josephson. Tarkovsky co-wrote the screenplay with Tonino Guerra.
Mirror is a 1975 Russian art film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It is loosely autobiographical, unconventionally structured, and incorporates poems composed and read by the director's father, Arseny Tarkovsky. The film features Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev, Alla Demidova, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Tarkovsky's wife Larisa Tarkovskaya and his mother Maria Vishnyakova. Innokenty Smoktunovsky provides voiceover and Eduard Artemyev the incidental music and sound effects.
Geoff Dyer is an English writer. He has authored a number of novels and books of non-fiction, which have won literary awards and been translated into 24 languages. Kathryn Schulz, writing in New York, described him as "one of our greatest living critics, not of the arts but of life itself, and one of our most original writers".
The Killers is a 1956 student film by the Soviet and Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky and his fellow students Marika Beiku and Aleksandr Gordon. The film is based on the short story "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway, written in 1927. It was Tarkovsky's first film, produced when he was a student at the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK).
The Names (1982) is the seventh novel of American novelist Don DeLillo. The work, set mostly in Greece, is primarily a series of character studies, interwoven with a plot about a mysterious "language cult" that is behind a number of unexplained murders. Among the many themes explored throughout the work is the intersection of language and culture, the perception of American culture from both within and outside its borders, and the impact that narration has on the facts of a story.
The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid is the sixth studio album by ambient drone music group Stars of the Lid. It was released in late 2001 on the Kranky label, on two CDs and three LPs. The album features long minimal, droning compositions created from heavily treated guitar, horn, flute, piano, and other classical instruments.
Sculpting in Time is a book by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky about art and cinema in general, and his own films in particular. It was originally published in 1985 in German shortly before the author's death, and published in English in 1987, translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair. The title refers to Tarkovsky's own name for his style of filmmaking.
Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) was a Russian film director, screenwriter and film theorist. He directed several student films, co-directed a documentary, and was the author of numerous screenplays, both for his own films and for those of other directors. He directed two stage plays and one radio production, played minor acting roles in several films, and wrote a book on film theory.
Solaris is a 1972 Soviet science fiction art film based on Stanisław Lem's 1961 novel of the same name. The film was co-written and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, and stars Donatas Banionis and Natalya Bondarchuk. The electronic music score was performed by Eduard Artemyev; a composition by J.S. Bach is also employed.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a series of first-person shooter survival horror video games developed by Ukrainian video game developer GSC Game World for Microsoft Windows. The games are set in the area surrounding the Chernobyl disaster site, colloquially known as the Zone, in an alternative reality where a second explosion occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant twenty years after the first and causes strange changes in the area around it.
Zona is a species of fish.