Andrei Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra, in their search for the location of Nostalghia (1983), give an account of their extraordinary “Travel across Italy”. Guerra guides Tarkovsky through Italy’s most traditional beauties. Tarkovski, amazed and disenchanted, is intent in his search of a more secret and inner Country which, perhaps, exists only in his imagination as an artist. In the end he will find what he is looking for in the desolate countryside of Central Italy and in the medieval villages around Sienna. Throughout this trip he is constantly urged by Tonino Guerra to reflect on his work and to think back on his experience as a film-maker and a poet. –Cannes Film Festival
Legendary Italian screenwriter was born Antonio Guerra on the 16th of March 1920 in Sant’Arcangelo, Italy, south of Ravenna. He wrote several short stories, poetry and novels and in 1956 his first screenplay “Man and Wolves” (co-written by Elio Petri) was directed by Giuseppe De Santis. Three years later he wrote the masterpiece, “L’Avventura”, which began his long collaboration with one of the greatest directors of all time Michelangelo Antonioni. Tonino Guerra earned Oscar nominations 3 times: for the Casanova ‘70 (1965), for Blowup (1966) by Antonioni and for Amarcord (1973) directed by Federico Fellini. He has worked with many other masters such as Francesco Rosi on Lucky Luciano (1974) and and Andrey Tarkovskiy on Nostalghia (1983). Tonino Guerra is a poet and one of busiest and the most important screenwriters of cinema who won Cannes Film Festvial’s Best Screenplay award for the “Voyage to Cythera” by Theo Angelopoulos and received an honorary award of the Venice Film… read more
One of the most important artists of the second half of the twentieth century, Tarkovsky was one of the few unqualified masters in the history of film. While he certainly wasn’t the only great director of his generation of Soviet filmmakers, he was, like Eisenstein was to an earlier generation, its most renowned and most influential.
The son of artists- actress Maria Ivanovna and poet Arseni Tarkovski— he studied both Arabic and geology before turning to film. He enrolled at VGIK in 1959, directed the acclaimed short The Steamroller and the Violin in 1960 and won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival for his first feature, Ivan’s Childhood, in 1962. By the time he completed his second feature, Andrei Rublev, he was regarded by many as “a poet of the cinema” – and by the Soviet censors as dangerously esoteric. Unreleased in the Soviet Union until 1971 (and then only in a truncated version), Andrei Rublev was seen first at international festivals and widely… read more
A little gem. Very poetic and profound. The scene at the beginning where Guerra receives a phone call from Antonioni (who wanted to say hello to Tarkovsky) made me cry. They don't make intellectuals like these three guys nowadays.
With the recent passing of screenwriter Tonino Guerra and all the discussion of Geoff Dyer’s Zona, he’s been on our minds lately.
The poet and screenwriter worked with Antonioni, Fellini, Angelopoulos, Tarkovsky, Rosi and many others.
