Andrei Tarkovsky Collection DVD

All seven of Tarkovsky's masterpieces presented in one set. Contains Ivan's Childhood (1962); Andrei Rublev (1966); Solaris (1972); The Mirror (1975); Stalker (1979); Nostalgia (1983) and The Sacrifice (1986).

Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror and Stalker have been digitally restored.

Ivan's Childhood (1962) explores the life of a 12-year-old boy, Ivan (Nikolai Burlyayev), who is orphaned after his family are killed by the Nazis and goes on to join a partisan group, who use his diminutive stature and agility for intelligence purposes. Worried about his safety, they send him to a quieter area, but the boy, hellbent on revenge for his parents' murder, insists on being given more dangerous assignments. If you expect this this first feature from Tarkovsky to lack the incandescence of his later work, you would be wrong. The film remains a remarkably powerful experience, both moving and as visually striking as any of Tarkovsy's later work.

Andrei Rublev (1966) is Tarkovsky's acclaimed epic about the life of the 15th century icon painter, charting his life through a turbulent period of Russian history. Rublev (Anatoli Solonitsyn) lives in a world consumed by feudal violence and human degradation, and the turmoil he sees all about him makes him lose the will to speak. After many years of silent travelling around medieval Russia, he meets a young boy who has taken charge of the construction of a large silver bell, and in him discovers the inspiration to speak again. Widely regarded as Tarkovsky's finest film, it's also tops the Vatican's film chart, and is among the most awesome and profound artistic achievements of the 20th century.

Adapted from a Stanislaw Lem novel, 'Solaris' (1972), charts the strange events which befall a group of young cosmonauts who work on a space station orbiting the ocean-covered planet Solaris. Fellow cosmonaut Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) is sent to investigate the occurrences and soon begins encountering a variety of supernatural phenomena, including the physical manifestation of his own painful memories of his now-dead wife. Kelvin tries to get to the bottom of the mystery and begins looking for a way to communicate with the powerful forces of Solaris. Mind-bending, metaphysical, slow-moving and elegaic, hypnotic once one adjusts, this is an undoubted tour de force by Tarkovsky, who also co-wrote the screenplay.

In the stunningly filmed allegorical fantasy, 'Stalker' (1979), a psychologically gifted man (Aleksandr Kaidanovsky) leads a Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) and a Professor (Nikolai Grinko) through an industrial wasteland called the Zone, in search of a room where ones wishes can be fulfilled. The battle between science, faith and art is played out in the Zone, a mysterious, forbidden wasteland where, as in Solaris, dreams become flesh. Tarkovsky creates his most disturbing vision of a dislocated world where the atmosphere of anxious uncertainty becomes almost another character. Haunting and possessed of a desolate beauty, the film poses the seductive question of whether the dreaming of dreams or the attaining of them is better.

Mirror (1975) sees Tarkovsky draw on episodes from his own life in this story of a dying man reflecting on his relationships with his parents, wife and son. Seamlessly blending past and present, dreams and memory, art, levitation and a wider overview of 20th Century Russian history, Tarkovsky's enigmatic account of childhood (and simultaneous expression of faith) is one of cinema's unique personal statements. Underpinned by spellbinding, almost rapturous, visual imagery - elements take on miraculous properties - this is film as poetry. The film also features Tarkovsky's father reading his own poems.

In 'Nostalgia' (1983) a Russian poet and musicologist researching the life of an 18th century composer meets a mysterious man who is convinced that the end of the world is nigh. Tarkovsky's first film outside of Russia is full of personal and Christian symbols and works as a study of such themes as memory, the melancholy of the expatriate and disenchantment with the material world. A film full of mysterious and extraordinary images.

Tarkovsky's final film, 'The Sacrifice' (1986), won a special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1986. On an isolated Swedish island Alexander (Erland Josephson), his wife, their children, her lover and various eccentric friends gather around a radio when nuclear war is announced. Alexander attempts to strike a deal with God and is willing to sacrifice everything, including his six-year-old son, in order to avert the war and mankind's annihilation. The next day dawns and everything is restored to normality.