Andrei Tarkovsky’s Voyage in Time: A Portrait of the Filmmaker in Exile

By 1982 Andrei Tarkovsky’s bat­tles with Sovi­et cen­sors had reached the point where he could no longer work in his native coun­try. This rarely seen doc­u­men­tary shows the great Russ­ian film­mak­er tread­ing unfa­mil­iar ground as he trav­els across south­ern Italy in search of loca­tions for his first film in exile, Nos­tal­ghia.

Voy­age in Time (Tiem­po di Viag­gio) is less about the Ital­ian coun­try­side than Tarkovsky’s inner land­scape, as he strug­gles to express his views on film­mak­ing and art to Toni­no Guer­ra, his co-writer on Nos­tal­ghia. Guer­ra, who died ear­li­er this year, was a leg­endary Ital­ian screen­writer. He col­lab­o­rat­ed with Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni on many of his great­est films, includ­ing L’Avven­tu­ra, La Notte, and Blow-Up, and with Fed­eri­co Felli­ni on sev­er­al of his lat­er films, includ­ing Amar­cord. The 63-minute film was pro­duced for Ital­ian tele­vi­sion and com­plet­ed in 1983, the same year as Nos­tal­ghia, with Tarkovsky and Guer­ra shar­ing the direct­ing cred­it. Voy­age in Time has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Tarkovsky Films Online.

Note: If you don’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly see sub­ti­tles, click CC at the bot­tom of the YouTube win­dow.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tarkovsky’s Solaris Revis­it­ed

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Very First Films: Three Stu­dent Films, 1956–1960