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.

The Color of Pomegranates (1968)

The Color of Pomegranates (1968)
Sayat Nova (original title)
79 min

Country: Soviet Union
Language: Armenian | Azerbaijani


Director: Sergei Parajanov
Writers: Sayat Nova (poems), Sergei Parajanov
Stars: Sofiko Chiaureli, Melkon Alekyan and Vilen Galstyan


The Color of Pomegranates is a biography of the Armenian ashug Sayat-Nova (King of Song) that attempts to reveal the poet's life visually and poetically rather than literally. The film is presented in a form of static tableaux and depicts the poet's coming of age, discovery of the female form, falling in love, entering a monastery and dying, all framed through both Sergei Parajanov's imagination and Sayat Nova's poems. Actress Sofiko Chiaureli notably plays six roles in the film, both male and female.According to Frank Williams, Paradjanov's film celebrates the survival of Armenian culture in the teeth of oppression and persecution: "There are specific images that are highly charged — blood-red juice spilling from a cut pomegranate into a cloth and forming a stain in the shape of the boundaries of the ancient Kingdom of Armenia; dyers lifting hanks of wool out of vats in the colours of the national flag, and so on".
The director had claimed his inspiration was "the Armenian illuminated miniatures. I wanted to create that inner dynamic that comes from inside the picture, the forms and the dramaturgy of colour." Parajanov once made a speech in Minsk in which he asserted that the Armenian public very likely did not understand The Color of Pomegranates, but then said that people "are going to this picture as to a holiday".(Wikipedia Page)

Rating: 86% (Rotten Tomatoes Critics)

Read Review: Senses Of Cinema

WATCH MOVIE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5yMyUDFht4