Kievskiy Freskiy (1966)

Kievskiy Freskiy (1966)
Kiev Frescoes
Short
15 minutes
Country: USSR


Director: Sergei Parajanov
Cast: Tengis Aruvadse, Antonina Leftiy a.o.

Kyiv Frescoes (1965-66), the aborted project that Paradjanov planned as his follow-up to Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964), was arguably the turning point of his career.Work on Kyiv Frescoes lasted approximately one year, from early 1965 to early 1966. Although Paradjanov never received approval to begin shooting due to conflicts with the authorities, he did manage to complete various drafts of the script and the initial screen tests, which he edited into a self-contained 13-minute short with a soundtrack. Considered as a whole, these surviving materials provide a fascinating glimpse into the film Paradjanov never shot. The project is important not only as the first systematic articulation of the director’s poetic, tableau-style aesthetic that found its fullest realization in The Color of Pomegranates, but also as an unusual attempt by him to use that aesthetic with a contemporary subject. (Kino Kultura)

Banned during pre-production, this is is the only audition footage that survived.In trouble with the authorities for also protesting the arrest of Ukrainian poets and intellectuals, Parajanov accepted an offer from Yerevan to make a documentary on Akop Ovnatanian (1965), an Armenian portrait painter who had lived and worked in Tbilisi. Portraits by Ovnatanian were later incorporated into scenes in "Kiev Frescoes" (1966), a production interrupted at the Dovzhenko Studios after a few weeks of shooting. Only fragments of "Akop Ovnatanian" and "Kiev Frescoes" remain today.