Andrei Tarkovsky was the most famous and well known film director in Soviet Union. In the frame of his very short lifetime, he always struggled to realize his masterpiece works "in life" due to censorship from the Soviet authorities earlier, or due to lack of funding after immigrating out of Russia.

His first full length film, Ivan's childhood, was produced at All Union Institute of Cinematography for his graduation work and was aimed to show his professional skills on directing rather than opening his philosophical understanding of being as shown more in his latter works. Combination of the various effects of cinematagraphy and directing / editing makes this film unique among the other war films. He has won two Golden Lions at Venice. (find more from the links on right)

Initially I'm inspired by all of his masterpieces, but specifically favore "Zerkalo" (1974) and "Stalker" (1979).

This band is called sigur rós and is from Iceland. My favorite album is ( ) .aka untitled. It was my greatest discovery from Island after diving into the musical inspiration by björk.

If you've ever been interested in Islandic music or you want to feel the spirit of this unique music experience created by this "weird people", I highly recommend you to see documentary Screaming Masterpiece.