andrei rublev by tarkovsky is showing at the ICA in july. i’ve not seen it but have had it recommended a lot and notice it is in the top 100 films below!… kultureflash says this about it…

An awe-inspiring film that confirmed Andrei Tarkovsky as one of the great poets of the cinema. Completed in 1966 but suppressed by the Soviet authorities for five years, Tarkovsky’s epic masterpiece is a sweeping medieval tale of Russia’s greatest icon painter. Shot in stark black and white, the exhilarating opening scene immediately establishes the key theme of transcendence in a cruel world, as a man soars above the bleak Russian landscape aboard a primitive hot-air balloon, only to come crashing down to earth moments later. The film is full of such unforgettable moments: a pagan ceremony by torchlight, a horse falling down a staircase during the storming of the castle, the casting of a bell in the story’s final cathartic episode. Faced with the horrors around him, Rublev resolves to give up art, until he’s inspired by something he witnesses to continue. In the glorious colour epilogue we see the results of that decision.