film

If Mooby Aribau's screening of Barry Lyndon on Friday doesn't fully scratch your "period epic" itch this weekend then head on over to Filmoteca the very next evening and take in another three hours of cinematic genius in the shape of Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1966). It is a sprawling and meditative portrait of the 15th-century Russian painter and icon, whose life becomes a lens through which to explore faith, violence, creativity and the weight of artistic responsibility. 

Rather than offering a conventional biographical narrative, Tarkovsky presents Rublev’s story as a series of episodic “tableaux”, each capturing a moment in medieval Russia’s turbulent social and spiritual landscape. The film moves through scenes of war, famine, pagan ritual, cruelty and the odd moment of beauty, revealing Rublev as a witness to the world and its events with an acutely sensitive, tormented eye. A touchstone of modern cinema.