Regents' Lecturer Mani Kaul has been called “the stern poet of the Indian cinema.” His first feature A Day's Bread (1969) was a landmark for India's “new generation” of filmmakers, and his most recent film The Mind of Clay premiered at PFA in March.
The release of Andrei Tarkovsky's remarkable science fiction film Solaris marked a milestone in Soviet cinema and a distinct change of pace for Tarkovsky, whose previous work was the controversial fifteenth-century epic Andrei Rublev (see April 4). But like Andrei Rublev, Solaris concerns a character who, in Tarkovsky's words, “has something to overcome, (and) must win in the name of the optimism in which I believe.” Based on the science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanislas Lemm, Solaris is set in the near future and tells of a psychologist, Kelvin, who is sent to the planet Solaris. There, scientists have discovered, the oceans can absorb human memory and materialize the objects of our thoughts. Kelvin becomes host to the presence of his dead wife Hari and then increasingly immersed in his memories and those of his colleagues. Solaris is shown in its uncut version.