Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972) August 18, 2006

part of this series:
From the Tsars to the Stars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema
August 11 – 24

http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/russianfant06.html

SOLARIS / SOLYARIS
Series: From the Tsars to the Stars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema [Aug 11 – 24 2006]
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky, Country: USSR, Release: 1972, Runtime: 165

Scientist Chris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) is sent to a space station whose inhabitants have been performing a series of experiments in an attempt to make contact with the strange planet known as Solaris. When he arrives, he believes that most of the crew has gone mad, until he’s visited by an apparition: his former lover Hari (Natalia Bondarchuk), who had committed suicide long ago. Thus he learns the secret of Solaris and its ocean, which creates "copies" of real people, "simulacra made not of ordinary matter but of neutrinos which are modelled by the thinking ocean out of the human subconscious. They are a physical embodiment of all the temptations, desires and suppressed guilt that torment the human mind" (Maya Turovskaya). Based on the novel by the great Stanislaw Lem, who died this March at the age of 84 and to whom we pay tribute with these screenings.