Sculpting In Time (Russian "Запечатлённое время", literally "Depicted Time") is a book by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky about art and cinema in general, and his own films in particular. It was originally published in 1986 in German shortly before the filmmaker’s death. The title refers to Tarkovsky's own name for his style of filmmaking.
The book is a wonderful and rich odyssey into the most complicated and difficult issues related to art making. It is a true gift for anyone who wishes to investigate where the boundaries of art differ from those of science and philosophy.
The book contains a great deal of poems by the filmmaker's father Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky and addresses how film and art has to approach spiritual questions. The book has commentary on each of his 7 major feature films, and his complex relationship with the Soviet Union. The final chapter, a discussion of his film The Sacrifice, was dictated in the last weeks of his life.
