Meditações - Tempo e cinema

Cinema is the only art that operates with the concept of time. Not because of its developing in time, because so does music and theater and ballet and other artforms. I mean time in the literal sense. After all, what is a take? From when we say: ‘Action!’ To when we end by saying ‘cut’, what is happening? It is the fixing of reality, the fixing of time. The conservation of time - for us to keep forever. No other art form can fix time except cinema. So film is a mosaic of time… all three have dialogue.

Andrei Tarkovsky