User Reviews

My interest in Russian cinema goes in all different directions and I picked up one of Kino videos two DVDs of the films of Sergei Paradjanov, The Color of Pomegranates/Paradjanov: A Requiem.

I had seen Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors a film made in a Ukrainian dialect and which was about god and people in very un-Soviet ways. I had to watch it as part of a course on Russian history since it was deemed to be a good representation of what life was like "back then". The film eventually got Paradjanov pitched into jail for among other things "surrealism". Thanks to people like John Updike he got out of prison and went back to making films.

Strange films.

His films after Shadows seem more works of art then straight narrative. Think something like Matthew Barney's Cremaster, but with no bs behind it, Paradjanov believed in what he was doing.

I just finished watching Requiem which is essentially a one hour interview with him in a hotel room during the Berlin film festival in 1998. I wanted to get a background on the man and his films and hoped that the movie would prepare me for the feature he directed that shares the disc.

Having watched it I know a little more than I did before however I did gain a respect and an intense like for the man. He is a genuine artist who wants to make his films his way. He does it for the art. The clips from his films make we wary of his films post Shadows. They are formal and stylized and amateurishly made. There is a genuine passion, but considering this was a man struggling to get anything made its okay.

The trouble is that the clips included seem almost randomly selected and there is no feeling as to why they were chosen or how they relate to what he's talking about. What he talks about is also a problem in that he just talks and bounces all over the place. It is interesting but except for two very brief narrated bits running less than a minute or two there is no background, its simply Paradjanov being Paradjanov, which isn't bad, its just not great.

(One piece I read on Paradjanov said that there were six films made on him right after he died in 1990, this being one of them. The one that everyone seems to agree is the best one to see, and seemingly one of the great documentaries is one subtitled The Last Spring, or some such title. Unfortunately its not currently available anywhere) I doubt that I will search out anything else he's done once I watch Pomegranates, the second film on the disc, but at least I will have come in contact with a genuine character and someone who's views and life will travel on somewhere in my psyche.

Should you see it? If its free, yes, or if you are interested in Russian cinema or interesting, non-run of the mill stuff see it... but don't search it out unless you have a woolly for the films of this director

Watching this possessed man, we can easily see him commanding the monstrosity of his sets. This documentary, which is basically just an interview with Parajanov, works nicely as an introduction to some of his history, the chronology of his films, and his opinions on various subjects. Unfortunately, we see that he believes one must be born a director (though he himself went to film school). He talks about how a director films the truth as he sees it. I think Parajanov's fat ego clouded his mind, since it would make more sense if he was talking of artists in general. And we see that when it comes to political leaders, he leans towards the egotistical theatrics of Lenin, who he considers a "born" actor, as opposed to the "sleepy" Brezhnev.

He takes himself -- or rather, his purpose as an artist -- very seriously: he insists that the German children need Faust to be made, that the unborn children will be saved from TV and bubble gum if they experience Faust. But he's not a conceited man, and openly talks about the artists he loves (most of which I hadn't heard of, and some of whom he feels hadn't lived up to their potential). However, he does at one point criticize "submissive" films (propagandist films?) and insists that their creators should be condemned; dangerous, this from a man who was so condemned for a crime as ludicrous as "leaning toward" same-sexuality (a "crime," among others, for which he was sentenced to five years in 1974, where he listened to the confessions of other inmates, and was let out prematurely thanks to the help of, among others, John Updike). We learn that that the director considers Pasolini to be a God; and, at a film festival, we see Parajanov cry as he dedicates his last film to the memory of Tarkovsky, in a scene that suggests knowing that he too will die in less than two years. 7/10

In case you've never heard of Sergei Paradjanov - 1924-1990 - he was an Armenian movie director in Soviet times who was imprisoned for "same-sexuality". "Paradjanov: A Requiem" features him talking about his movies (I saw it on the B-side of "The Color of Pomegranates"). Like many directors, he goes to great lengths to talk about the artistic aspects in his movies. I thought that it was fairly interesting, but maybe all these years of famous people being hacks and blow-hards have desensitized us to any commentary. Among other things, when Paradjanov won an award, he dedicated it to his recently deceased friend Andrei Tarkovsky. Sergei Paradjanov was truly an interesting man.

portrait more than interview. confession of a man who know levers of hell more than a portrait. no revelations. only a profound honest self definition. no secrets. only words about a period, about desert of existence, about few of his films and a moment of silence for a great friend of him. a movie who brutally breaks expectations or hopes. because it is far by revelation. it is a form of last will, mark of a special victory frame, a film who not present a director but only remember it. a homage but not in usual manner. to love it is useful to love Parajanov universe in a innocent manner. because, as Pirosmani, he remains a kind of revolutionary for his admirable courage, force, imagination, tears of soul and wise vision about past and future. because he has the science to be only himself, far from masks or cool definitions. a not great documentary. only a necessary one. not to know more about its hero. but for discover crumbs of his work, word and stormy innocence in our pieces of life.