Invited by the classic of American experimental film Stan Brakhage, in 1983 Andrey Tarkovsky visited the Telluride Film Festival (Colorado). Along with a mini-retrospective of Tarkovsky’s pictures, Brakhage’s own new film—Hell Spit Flexion (1983)— was screened at the festival.
Using the opportunity, Brakhage also showed the Russian colleague his other works by projecting them on the wallpaper in a hotel room. Inspired by this experience, he wrote an essay about the seminal (non)meeting with Tarkovsky and the Russian classic’s attitude to experimental film. Based on this story, Robert Bird’s lecture will trace similarities between the practice of Tarkovsky and the evolution of experimental film (from Maya Deren to Nathaniel Dorsky).