Solaris

On the phenomenology of the black sun; an anthology of sightings; on ways of seeing; an ecoparable.

The astronaut Chris Kelvin receives a visit from a woman who is a double of his dead wife. This story, told in Stanislaw Lem’s eponymous novel, was once adapted into the film Solaris by the legendary Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky. According to Deimantas Narkevičius, Tarkovsky was not as critical of the increasing impact of electronic media on relationships and on the complex nature of human memory as Lem, the original author of the story. In this video, the actor Donatas Banionis reappears in his role as Kelvin, forty years after Tarkovsky’s film was shot. Revisiting Solaris is based on the last chapter of Lem's book, which had been left out of Tarkovsky’s adaptation. In order to visualize the landscape of Solaris and expose complex specters of the past, Narkevičius combines the new footage and a series of photos from 1905 taken by the Lithuanian painter and composer Mykolojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis.

Recorded at Variety Arts Center on 11 November 1995

An extraordinary found footage documentary inspired by Stanisław Lem’s “Solaris”. A trance-like, personal story about loss, mourning & memory. The film consists of excerpts from 70 films produced by the Educational Film Studio in Lodz in the 1960s and the first radio adaptations of "Solaris". Lem begins writing “Solaris” the same year that Resnais' “Hiroshima Mon Amour” is released – says Kuba Mikurda – Like Resnais' film, I find “Solaris” a fascinating study of post-traumatic memory – repressed memories that pave their way into consciousness and demand to be expressed.