Sergeï Paradjanov

Sergei Parajanov was born in 1924 in Tbilisi, Georgia, and died in 1990 in Yerevan, Armenia. After studying cinema at the VGIK, the prestigious film school in Moscow where he notably studied under Alexander Dovjenko, he worked for film studios in Kiev and then for Georgian studios in Armenia. In the films he made from the early 1950s onwards,

Parajanov gradually diverged from the Soviet pattern to develop a body of work in direct connection with the traditions of the regions in which he filmed (Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia), whose pro-independence ambitions he supported. He was subsequently sentenced to prison several times on various pretexts (homosexuality, trafficking works of art) from the 1980s onwards. Parajanov, who said that he acquired his taste for art objects and collections from his father, who was an antiques dealer, was also a musician, painter, mosaicist and decorator and produced a prolific and transdisciplinary body of work at the frontier between conceptual art and folklore. In his work as a visual artist, he made collages when the Soviet authorities prevented him from filming. These works, which he considered compressed films, played a unique role.    

Filmmaker, producer and programmer Daniel Bird has been invited to present this screening and will talk about the restoration of Parajanov's films, a project he has been leading for many years.