Time within time: the diaries, 1970-1986

Abstract

This collection of personal diaries, spanning from 1970 to 1986, documents the professional and private life of a Soviet filmmaker. The entries chronicle the immense creative, bureaucratic, and ideological struggles faced while working within the state-controlled studio system on projects such as a science fiction film and an autobiographical work. These professional anxieties are interwoven with intimate reflections on family life, including the birth of a son, financial hardship, and complex parental relationships. The text also serves as an intellectual journal, containing meditations on the nature of cinema, truth, spirituality, and morality, often prompted by extensive reading of Russian and European philosophy and literature. The later period of the diaries reflects the artist’s move to work in Western Europe, introducing themes of exile and homesickness, and concludes with entries written shortly before his death from cancer in Paris. – AI-generated abstract.