The Tarkovsky Ring

Paul Schrader has updated his seminal 1972 text “Transcendental Style in Film” and included this cool diagram on the development of non-narrative/slow cinema.

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In the new introduction, Schrader diagrams the larger movement by showing how well-known filmmakers move in three different directions as they push away from narrative. There are the “Surveillance Cam” filmmakers (Abbas Kiarostami), who emphasize capturing day-to-day reality. There is “Art Gallery,” cinema which is a move toward pure imagery: light and color, which can manifest itself in films that are abstract, or dream-like (Lynch). And the third direction is what Schrader refers to as Mandala, or “meditation” cinema, films that work on the viewer almost like a trance (Ozu).

I also drew what I called the [Andrei] ‘Tarkovsky Ring.’ What happens when an artist goes through the ‘Tarkovsky Ring,’ that’s the point where he is no longer making cinema for a paying audience. He’s making it for institutions, for museums, and so forth.



Interesting, a lot of personal favorites there. Not sure if I 100% agree with some of the placements, but I imagine interpretation is quite personal.