The Truth of Direct Observation: Andrei Rublev and the Documentary Style of Soviet Cinema in the 1960s

This chapter discusses Tarkovsky’s appreciation of newsreel-documentary films in the context of the Soviet film discourse over new documentary style in the 1960s. As Mandušić demonstrates, the sixties’ cult of authenticity achieved through the documentary representation of reality was one of many ways for the Thaw cinema to counter late Stalinist movies notorious for their excessive mythologization. Against the backdrop of these debates, Tarkovsky devised his theory of documentary realism in his essay “Imprinted Time” (1967), which he practically implemented in Andrei Rublev (1966). Aimed to recreate the authentic experience of time and space rather accurately reconstruct the historical environment of medieval Russia, Andrei Rublev applied visual strategies – extended duration, stable or static frames, composition in depth – that constitutes his method of direct observation.