Sergei Iosifovich Parajanov[a][b] (January 9, 1924 – July 20, 1990) was a Soviet film director and screenwriter of Armenian origin.[1] He is regarded by film critics, film historians and filmmakers to be one of the best filmmakers in cinema history.[2]
Parajanov studied at Moscow's VGIK under the tutualge of filmmakers Igor Savchenko and Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and began his career as professional film director in 1954. Parjanov became increasingly disenchanted of his films as well as the state sanctioned art style of socialist realism, prominent throughout the Soviet Union. After moving to Ukraine and directing Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, his first major work which diverged from socialist realism and gave him international acclaim,[3] he would later disown and proclaim his films made before 1965 as "garbage."[2] Parajanov subsequetely directed The Color of Pomegranates, which was met with widespread acclaim among filmmakers, and is often considered one of the greatest films ever made.[4]
Throughout Parajanov's life, he was met with increased scurity from Soviet authorities over his films, his personal life, and his political involvments surrounding Ukrainian nationalism.[5][6][7] Nearly all of his film projects and plans from 1965 to 1973 were banned, scrapped or closed by the Soviet film administrations, both locally in Kyiv and Yerevan and federal, almost without discussion. Parajanov arrested in late 1973 on false charges of rape, homosexuality and bribery. He was imprisoned until 1977, despite pleas for pardon from various artists. Even after his release (he was arrested for the third and last time in 1982), he was a persona non grata in Soviet cinema. It was not until the mid-1980s, when the political climate started to relax, that he could resume directing. Still, it required the help of influential Georgian actor Dodo Abashidze and other friends to have his last feature films greenlighted. His health seriously weakened after four years in labor camps and nine months in prison in Tbilisi. Parajanov died of lung cancer in 1990, at a time when, after almost 20 years of suppression, his films were being featured at foreign film festivals. In a 1988 interview he stated that, "Everyone knows that I have three Motherlands. I was born in Georgia, worked in Ukraine and I'm going to die in Armenia."[8] Parajanov is buried at Komitas Pantheon in Yerevan.[9]
Memorial plaque on the Parajanov family house in Tbilisi
Sergei Iosifovich Parajanov was born in Tiflis, Georgia, then part of the Soviet Union to artistically inclined Armenian parents Iosif Parajanov and Siranush Bejanova. His Armenian family name, Parajaniants, is attested by a surviving historical document at the Sergei Parajanov Museum.[11] He gained access to art from an early age. In 1945, he traveled to Moscow enrolled in the directing department at the VGIK, one of the oldest and highly respected film schools in the country, and studied under the tutelage of directors Igor Savchenko and Oleksandr Dovzhenko.
Parajanov was bisexual[12][13] In 1948, he was convicted of homosexual acts (which were illegal at the time in the Soviet Union) with an MGB officer named Nikolai Mikava in Tbilisi. These charges were later proven false. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released under an amnesty after three months.[14] In video interviews, friends and relatives contest the truthfulness of anything he was charged with. They speculate the punishment may have been a form of political retaliation for his rebellious views.
In 1950 Parajanov married his first wife, Nigyar Kerimova, in Moscow. She came from a Muslim Tatar family and converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity to marry Parajanov. Kerimova's relatives who disapproved of the marriage, murdered her following her conversion. After her murder Parajanov moved to Kyiv, Ukraine, where he produced a few Russian and Ukrainian language documentaries (Dumka, Golden Hands, Natalia Uzhvy) and a handful of narrative films: Andriesh, The Top Guy, Ukrainian Rhapsody, and Flower on the Stone. He became fluent in Ukrainian and married his second wife, Svitlana Ivanivna Shcherbatiuk (1938–2020), in 1956. Shcherbatiuk gave birth to their son, Suren, in 1958.[15] The couple eventually divorced and she and Suren relocated to Kyiv.[16]
Break from Socialist Realism
Andrey Tarkovsky's first film, Ivan's Childhood, had an enormous impact on Parajanov's self-discovery as a filmmaker. Later the influence became mutual, and he and Tarkovsky became close friends. Another influence was Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, who Parajanov would later describe as "like a God" to him and a director of "majestic style".[17] In 1965 Parajanov abandoned socialist realism and directed the poetic Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, his first film over which he had complete creative control. It won numerous international awards and, unlike the subsequent The Color of Pomegranates, was relatively well received by the Soviet authorities. The Script Editorial Board at Goskino of Ukraine praised the film for "conveying the poetic quality and philosophical depth of M. Kotsiubynsky’s tale through the language of cinema," and called it "a brilliant creative success of the Dovzhenko studio." Moscow also agreed to Goskino of Ukraine's request to release the film with its original Ukrainian soundtrack intact, rather than redub the dialogue into Russian for Soviet-wide release, in order to preserve its Ukrainian flavor.[18] (Russian dubbing was standard practice at that time for non-Russian Soviet films when they were distributed outside the republic of origin.)
Parajanov departed Kyiv shortly afterwards for his ancestors' homeland, Armenia. In 1969, he embarked on Sayat Nova, a film that many consider to be his crowning achievement, though it was shot under relatively poor conditions and had a very small budget.[19] Soviet censors intervened and banned Sayat Nova for its allegedly inflammatory content. Parajanov re-edited his footage and renamed the film The Color of Pomegranates. Actor Alexei Korotyukov remarked: "Parajanov made films not about how things are, but how they would have been had he been God."[20]Mikhail Vartanov wrote in 1969 that "Besides the film language suggested by Griffith and Eisenstein, the world cinema has not discovered anything revolutionarily new until The Color of Pomegranates ...".[21]
Imprisonment and later work
Parajanov's monument in TbilisiParajanov's statue in front of his museum in Yerevan
By December 1973, Soviet authorities had grown increasingly suspicious of Parajanov's films, his bisexual proclivities, as well as perceived subversive proclivities, particularly his bisexuality, and sentenced him to five years in a hard labor camp for "a rape of a Communist Party member, and the propagation of pornography."[22] Three days before Parajanov was sentenced, Andrei Tarkovsky wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, asserting that "In the last ten years Sergei Parajanov has made only two films: Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors and The Colour of Pomegranates. They have influenced cinema first in Ukraine, second in this country as a whole, and third in the world at large. Artistically, there are few people in the entire world who could replace Paradanov. He is guilty – guilty of his solitude. We are guilty of not thinking of him daily and of failing to discover the significance of a master." An eclectic group of artists, actors, filmmakers and activists protested on behalf of Parajanov, calling for his immediate release. Among them were Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Leonid Gaidai, Eldar Ryazanov, Yves Saint Laurent, Marcello Mastroianni, Françoise Sagan, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky and Mikhail Vartanov.
Parajanov served four years out of his five-year sentence, and later credited his early release to the efforts of the FrenchSurrealist poet and novelist Louis Aragon, the Russian poet Elsa Triolet (Aragon's wife), and the American writer John Updike.[19] His early release was authorized by Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, presumably as a consequence of Brezhnev's chance meeting with Aragon and Triolet at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. When asked by Brezhnev if he could be of any assistance, Aragon requested the release of Parajanov, which was effected by December 1977.[22]
While he was incarcerated, Parajanov produced a large number of miniature doll-like sculptures (some of which were lost) and some 800 drawings and collages, many of which were later displayed in Yerevan, where the Serhii Parajanov Museum is now permanently located.[23] (The museum, opened in 1991, a year after Parajanov's death, hosts more than 200 works as well as furnishings from his home in Tbilisi.) His efforts in the camp were repeatedly compromised by prison guards, who deprived him of materials and called him mad, their cruelty only subsiding after a statement from Moscow admitted that "the director is very talented."[19]
After his return from prison to Tbilisi, the close watch of Soviet censors prevented Parajanov from continuing his cinematic pursuits and steered him towards the artistic outlets he had nurtured during his time in prison. He crafted extraordinarily intricate collages, created a large collection of abstract drawings and pursued numerous other avenues of non-cinematic art, sewing more dolls and some whimsical suits.
In February 1982 Parajanov was once again imprisoned, on charges of bribery, which happened to coincide with his return to Moscow for the premiere of a play commemorating Vladimir Vysotsky at the Taganka Theatre, and was effected with some degree of trickery. Despite another stiff sentence, he was freed in less than a year, with his health seriously weakened.[22]
In 1985, the slow thaw within the Soviet Union spurred Parajanov to resume his passion for cinema. With the encouragement of various Georgian intellectuals, he created the multi-award-winning film The Legend of Suram Fortress, based on a novella by Daniel Chonkadze, his first return to cinema since Sayat Nova fifteen years earlier. In 1988, Parajanov made another multi-award-winning film, Ashik Kerib, based on a story by Mikhail Lermontov. It is the story of a wandering minstrel, set in the Azerbaijani culture. Parajanov dedicated the film to his close friend Andrei Tarkovsky and "to all the children of the world".
Parajanov on a 1999 stamp of ArmeniaParajanov's tombstone in Yerevan
Despite having studied film at the VGIK, Parajanov discovered his artistic path only after seeing Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's dreamlike first film Ivan's Childhood.
Parajanov was highly appreciated by Tarkovsky himself in the biographical film "Voyage in Time" ("Always with huge gratitude and pleasure I remember the films of Sergei Parajanov which I love very much. His way of thinking, his paradoxical, poetical... ability to love the beauty and the ability to be absolutely free within his own vision"). In the same film Tarkovsky stated that Parajanov is one of his favorite filmmakers.
Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni stated that “The Color of Pomegranates by Parajanov, in my opinion one of the best contemporary film directors, strikes with its perfection of beauty.” Parajanov was also admired by American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. French film director Jean-Luc Godard also stated that "In the temple of cinema, there are images, light, and reality. Sergei Parajanov was the master of that temple".
Despite having many admirers of his art, his vision did not attract many followers. "Whoever tries to imitate me is lost", he reportedly said.[24] However, directors such as Theo Angelopoulos, Béla Tarr and Mohsen Makhmalbaf share Parajanov's approach to film as a primarily visual medium rather than as a narrative tool.[25]
Parajanov's life story provides (quite loosely) the basis for the 2006 novel Stet by the American author James Chapman.[30]
Lady Gaga's video for "911" visually references The Color of Pomegranates through much of the video.[31] The film poster also appears on the street scene at the end of the video.[32] Gaga's video presents the film's symbols in her own allegory of pain.[32]
Madonna's 1995 music video Bedtime Story restages some content from the movie[which?] (such as the scene of a young child lying in a fetal position on a pentagram on the floor while an adult covers it with a blanket, and another where a naked foot crushes a bunch of grapes lying on an enscribed tablet), among other artistic inspiration depicting dreams and surrealist artwork in the video.[33]
Nicolas Jaar released, in 2015, the album Pomegranates, intended as an alternative soundtrack for The Color of Pomegranates.[34]
^Steffen, James (2013). The cinema of Sergei Parajanov. Wisconsin film studies. Madison, Wis: The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN978-0-299-29654-4.
Selected bibliography of books and scholarly articles about Sergei Parajanov.
English language sources
Dixon, Wheeler & Foster, Gwendolyn. "A Short History of Film." New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. ISBN9780813542690
Cook, David A. "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Film as Religious Art." Post Script 3, no. 3 (1984): 16–23.
First, Joshua. Sergei Paradjanov: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. London and Chicago: Itellect; University of Chicago Press, 2016. ISBN9781783207091
Jayamanne, Laleen. Poetic Cinema and the Spirit of the Gift in the Films of Pabst, Parajanov, Kubrick and Ruiz. Amsterdam University Press 2021. ISBN9789463726245
Kim, Olga. “Cinema and Painting in Parajanov’s Aesthetic Metamorphoses.” Studies in Russian & Soviet Cinema 12, no. 1 (March 2018): 19–36. doi:10.1080/17503132.2017.1415519.
Nebesio, Bohdan. "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Storytelling in the Novel and the Film." Literature/Film Quarterly 22, no. 1 (1994): 42–49.
Oeler, Karla. "A Collective Interior Monologue: Sergei Parajanov and Eisenstein's Joyce-Inspired Vision of Cinema." The Modern Language Review 101, no. 2 (April 2006): 472–487.
Oeler, Karla. "Nran guyne/The Colour of Pomegranates: Sergo Parajanov, USSR, 1969." In The Cinema of Russia and the Former Soviet Union, 139–148. London, England: Wallflower, 2006. [Book chapter]
Papazian, Elizabeth A. "Ethnography, Fairytale and ‘Perpetual Motion’ in Sergei Paradjanov's Ashik- Kerib." Literature/Film Quarterly 34, no. 4 (2006): 303–12.
Liehm, Antonín J., ed. Serghiej Paradjanov: Testimonianze e documenti su l’opera e la vita. Venice: La Biennale di Venezia/Marsilio, 1977. (Italian language)