Parajanov

Sergei Parajanov was a Soviet Armenian filmmaker and artist born January 9, 1924, in Tbilisi, Georgia. He became renowned for a highly original, visually rich cinema that fused ethnography, poetry, and religious and folk motifs.

His best-known films include Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965), a vividly colored ethnographic drama set in the Hutsul region of the Carpathians; The Color of Pomegranates (1969), a lyric biopic about the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova; and The Legend of the Suram Fortress (1985), a mythic, stylized tale drawing on Georgian legend.

Parajanov's approach combines elaborate mise-en-scène, non-natural lighting, saturated color, and the assembly of textures and iconography from painting, textiles, and religious imagery. His work is celebrated for its symbolic imagery, formal inventiveness, and resistance to conventional storytelling.

In 1973 he was arrested by Soviet authorities on charges widely regarded as politically motivated and spent more than a decade in prison and exile; he was released in 1986 amid perestroika. He spent his final years in Yerevan, where he died July 20, 1990.

A museum in Yerevan preserves his work and memorabilia, and Parajanov is widely recognized as a major influence on world cinema, celebrated for expanding the possibilities of film form and for his daring stylistic innovations.