If the high-profile releases of the summer have been bumming you out, fear not, a masterwork will arrive at the end of the season, albeit one half-a-century old. On the heels of recent theatrical releases and subsequent home releases of a pair of Andrei Tarkosvky restorations, Stalker and The Sacrifice, another masterpiece from the director will be getting the same treatment this summer.
His second feature Andrei Rublev, which follows the life of the iconic painter in medieval Russia, has been given a new high-definition restoration from Janus Films, and a new trailer has now arrived. The gorgeous-looking restoration of the black-and-white classic will exclusively open at NYC’s Film Society of Lincoln Center in late August (featuring Tarkovsky’s preferred 183-minute cut), then the following month, it will join The Criterion Collection in a disc that also includes the 205-minute version, The Passion According to Andrei, as well as many, many more bonus features.
Courtesy of The Playlist, check out the trailer and poster below.
With his second feature, a towering epic that took him years to complete, Andrei Tarkovsky waded deep into the past and emerged with a visionary masterwork. Threading together several self-contained episodes, the filmmaker traces the renowned icon painter Andrei Rublev through the harsh realities of fifteenth-century Russian life, vividly conjuring the dark and otherworldly atmosphere of the age: a primitive hot-air balloon takes to the sky, snow falls inside an unfinished church, naked pagans celebrate the midsummer solstice, a young man oversees the casting of a gigantic bell. Appearing here in Tarkovsky’s preferred 183-minute cut, as well as the version that was originally censored by Soviet authorities, Andrei Rublev is an arresting meditation on art, faith, and endurance, and a powerful reflection on expressive constraints in the director’s own time.
Andrei Rublev opens at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on August 24 and arrives on The Criterion Collection on September 25.