MIRROR | FOMO Secret Cinema Tbilisi

MIRROR

Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975, Soviet Union, 1h46m, presented in the original Russian audio with English subtitles

Andrei Tarkovsky kept having these recurring dreams about his childhood home. So he rebuilt it to make MIRROR. He had the wooden house reconstructed on its original foundations and the neighbouring fields replanted with the buckwheat he remembered growing there.

That should give you some idea of how personal this film is.

MIRROR moves between childhood, wartime and adulthood through the recollections of a man looking back over his life. An absent father, a mother waiting, an argument with an ex-wife and memories of the countryside return in fragments. Dreams interrupt recollections. Newsreel footage places private experiences alongside the history unfolding around them. Tarkovsky’s father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, reads his own poems on the soundtrack.

At the centre is Margarita Terekhova, playing both the narrator’s mother and his estranged wife. The same boy appears as the narrator in childhood and as his son. These choices make the family relationships especially affecting: the people closest to him carry the same faces of the people he remembers, while his own behaviour raises questions about what he's inherited versus what he's passing on.

There's extraordinary beauty here, in the burning barn, the movement of wind across a field and the attention paid to rooms and faces. Familiar things become difficult to leave behind. Tarkovsky keeps returning to them with the intensity of someone trying to remember exactly how it felt to be there.

For all its intimacy, MIRROR reached far beyond Tarkovsky’s own family. Viewers wrote to him describing the shock of recognising their own lives in his images. I was reading that one woman from Novosibirsk told him that the things that tormented, comforted and sustained her were all there in his film. He had gone to remarkable lengths to reconstruct his own past. Little did he realise other people found theirs in it.

And as for those recurring dreams I mentioned? Tarkovsky said that once he’d made the film, he stopped dreaming about his childhood home. That’s a lot of work for a little catharsis, but I guess we all have our methods.

MIRROR is for fans of ART-HOUSE ESSENTIALS · DREAM LOGIC · SLOW CINEMA · USSR/SOVIET ERA CINEMA · TARKOVSKY

10% OFF FOOD, PLUS GROUP DEALS

Dinner before a film at FOMO is now sorted! We’ve arranged special offers with our two favourite places to eat in Bazari Orbeliani, both right next door to FOMO:

• 10% off at La Focacceria

• 20% off at Potato Factory

• Potato Factory 2+1: buy two and get one free

• Potato Factory 3+2: buy three and get two free

Simply show your Fienta ticket when ordering. You’re welcome to eat in the Sherekilebi Bar at FOMO Secret Cinema or upstairs at FOMO Open-Air Cinema. Tell them where you’ll be sitting and they’ll bring your food to you.

FOOD AND DRINK POLICY: SHEREKILEBI Bar in FOMO Secret Cinema opens 1 hour before the first screening of the day and closes at 01:30, serving a wide selection of beer, wine, cocktails, and non-alcoholic refreshments including coffee and tea, as well as fresh hot popcorn! Outside food is allowed in the bar but not in the cinema. No alcohol or drinks from outside are allowed. All guests are invited to arrive early and stay late!

LOCATION: FOMO Secret Cinema, Bazari Orbeliani, Tbilisi. A five minute walk from Liberty Square metro.

HOW TO FIND FOMO: Enter Bazari Orbeliani via Atoneli St above Carrefour and take the stairs on your left to Level 1. Signage on the door. You can also check our Instagram story highlights for a video showing exactly how to find us: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3OTMzMTA2Mjk0MDI5MjM1

REFUND & CREDIT POLICY: If FOMO cancels a screening, all ticket holders will receive a full refund. If your plans change and you can no longer attend, we’ll issue you a credit for the value of your ticket, which can be used for any FOMO film screening within the following 30 days.

TICKETS are also available at SHEREKILEBI Bar on arrival unless sold out.