Read Instead…in Print

“An actor’s shirt has to be made out of the same material as his face.”

Andrei Tarkovsky

Read instead…in print #32

Andrei Tarkovsky always insisted that everything needed to look real. Clothes worn in his films could not be new. “The costumes which you see in the films of Solaris, The Mirror and Stalker, are the fruit of discussions I had with Tarkovsky,” costume designer Nelli Fomina remarks in the book Nelli Fomina. Costumes for the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, compiled by Anastasija Nikitina and Fedor Ermoshin. “He attached great importance to costume design and to their details in establishing the image of each character: for him, costumes told the audience a good deal about the character and his or her emotional state.”

It is a treasure of a book, and I hadn’t even been aware of its existence until recently. Published for the first time in a single volume are the words, sketches and photographs from the archive of Nelli Fomina – Tarkovsky rarely permitted anyone to take photographs on set, but Fomina was allowed to, as attested by the photos she took on the set of Stalker – who contributed to more than the costumes to the creation of films that were to become classics of world cinema: Solaris, The Mirror and Stalker. She was also the director’s friend and right-hand for many years. From Tarkovsky’s enthusiasm that permeated the whole crew and set, to the collaborative creative work that is filmmaking and the notion of costume as the expression of the nature of a character, the book sheds a little more light on the films of one of cinema’s most brilliant, creative and uncompromising minds.

“My clothes were just as important to him as my dialogue.”

Nikolai Grinko about his character in Solaris

Read instead… in print is about a good book about cinema or filmmakers. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.