Glagoslav Publications releases Andrei Tarkovsky: The Collector of Dreams by Layla Alexander-Garrett

Dec. 10, 2012 - PRLog -- The year 2012 marks Andrei Tarkovsky’s 80th birthday anniversary. Tarkovsky passed away, having completed his prophetic philosophical drama The Sacrifice on the impending destruction of mankind in a nuclear war. The same year the world was shaken up by the Chernobyl disaster. Yet the same year the Swedish prime-minister Olaf Palme was gunned down on the very street Tarkovsky had shot the film's scene of panic in the lead-up to a nuclear strike.

The Sacrifice is Andrei Tarkovsky’s final masterpiece. The film was shot in Sweden, during the summer of 1985, while Tarkovsky was in exile; it turned out to be his final testament. But to this day little is known about the filming of The Sacrifice.

As a close colleague of Tarkovsky's – virtually the voice of the great director for those on the film crew who could not speak Russian – interpreter Layla Alexander-Garrett perhaps knew him like no-one else on set. What were his thoughts in his final year? What plans did he have; what were his fears? Day after day, while the film was being made, Layla Alexander-Garrett – Tarkovsky’s on-site interpreter – kept a diary which forms the basis of her award-winning book Andrei Tarkovsky: The Collector Of Dreams.

In this book the great director is portrayed as a real, living person: tormented, happy, inexhaustibly kind but at times harsh, unrelenting, conscience-stricken and artistically unfulfilled. In her memoir Andrei Tarkovsky: The Collector of Dreams the author narrates the final moments in the great director’s life and transports the reader to the heart of the filming process as it was in the midst of Andrei Tarkovsky’s greatness.

Author and playwright Layla Alexander-Garrett was born in Uzbekistan. She studied Russian language and literature, Tibetan Buddhism and film studies at Stockholm University. Layla worked as an interpreter for such icons of film and dramatic art as Andrei Tarkovsky, on his last film The Sacrifice, and Yuri Lubimov, on his production of The Master and Margarita at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.

Layla Alexander-Garrett is the author of a prize-winning memoir Andrei Tarkovsky: The Collector of Dreams and a photo album Andrei Tarkovsky: A Photographic Chronicle of the Making of The Sacrifice.

An active cultural figure, Layla Alexander-Garrett has organized numerous charity concerts and art festivals, including Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Paradjanov festivals in London. She has also curated a number of international photo exhibitions.

For media and review inquiries, please contact Yana Kovalskaya at y.kovalskaya@glagoslav.com. Libraries and book stores can direct their sales related inquiries to Camilla Stein at c.stein@glagoslav.com.