Andrei Tarkovsky's Taiga Summer

Tarkovsky's unpublished screenplay treatment, essentially a short story in present tense, consisting of 6 handwritten pages, called 'Konsentrat' (meaning "the concentrate" or "the extract"), was based on his year-long experiences working as an assistant with a state-guarded secret scientific research expedition to the Siberian taiga at the river Kureikye near Turukhansk in the Krasnoyarsk Province in 1953, for the Academy of Science Institute for Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold, to prospect for natural diamonds for industrial use. His short story is about the leader of a geological expedition, who waits for the boat that brings back the concentrates collected by the expedition, which is surrounded by great mystery, and whose purpose is a state secret. It was written in a single sitting during Tarkovsky's VGIK film school entrance examination taken immediately after his return from the trip in 1954. He received the highest grade for it: a "5" (equivalent to an A), and was admitted to the following semester.