Andrey Tarkovskiy

Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was born in the village of Zavrazhye, Yuryevets District, Ivanovo Oblast (now Kadysky District, Kostroma Oblast), on the Volga, into a literary family. His father, Arseny Aleksandrovich Tarkovsky, was a poet and translator, a native of Kirovograd, Ukraine. His mother, Maria Ivanovna Vishnyakova, graduated from the Literary Institute in Moscow. His sister was M. Tarkovskaya.

In 1935, Arseny Aleksandrovich left the family, and Maria Ivanovna took a job as a proofreader at the First Model Printing House in Moscow, where she worked until retirement. In 1939, Andrei entered Moscow School No. 554, but the war again brought him back to the places of his early childhood: his mother took Andrei and his younger sister into evacuation to Yuryevets, to relatives.

In 1943, the Tarkovskys returned to Moscow, and Andrei returned to his old school, where he studied in the same class as Andrei Voznesensky. Andrei Tarkovsky’s school record, preserved in the VGIK archive, shows no signs of diligence or enthusiasm in any subject, but rather a lack of interest in the natural sciences and passable knowledge in the humanities. Andrei’s upbringing was traditionally artistic. At the age of seven he was sent to the district music school for piano, and in seventh grade he entered an art school, where he studied drawing.

In 1951–1952, Tarkovsky studied in the Arabic department of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies; however, after suffering a concussion during physical education classes, he left the institute. Without completing the course, he got a job at the All-Union Research Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold, and in May 1953 became a collector in an expedition of the Scientific Research Mining and Prospecting Institute (NIGRIZoloto) in the remote Turukhansk District of Krasnoyarsk Krai. Upon returning from the expedition in 1954, Tarkovsky submitted documents to VGIK and was successfully admitted to the directing department (M. I. Romm’s workshop).

In 1956, the period of the “th