Sergei Parajanov

The Last Days of Humanity

The panorama of human affairs encounters the “man with a movie camera”. His playground has no boundaries, his curiosity no limits. Characters, situations and places pitch camp in the life of a humanity that is at once the viewer and the thing viewed. But what are the last days of this humanity? Have they already passed? Are they now or still to come?

Parajanov. A Ticket to Eternity

Documentary about the life of Sergei Parajanov, a prominent Soviet-era filmmaker who was active in Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia and was persecuted by the communist government for his views on the pretext of his homosexuality, which was a crime in the USSR. The centerpiece of this documentary is Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a 1965 movie directed by Parajanov, that awakened the Ukrainian national consciousness which had been suppressed by decades of Soviet rule.

Sergei Parajanov, The Exile

Sergei Paradjanov, the great Soviet filmmaker of Armenian origin who was born and grew up in Tbilisi, Georgia, studied film in Moscow and worked for many years in Ukraine, talks on camera to Fotos Lamprinos about his life, his films, and events in the USSR under Gorbachev’s Perestroika, a few short months before he died and while the state of his health was already deteriorating. The film includes rare footage of the massacre of Georgian civilians by the Soviet Army in April 1989 and unpublished material from the Ukrainian prison in which Paradjanov served his sentence.

Paradjanov, le dernier collage

Paradzhanov: Christ score in C major

In 1989, Yuri Ilyenko came to Tbilisi to show Sergei Parajanov his film “Swan Lake. The Zone“, based on Parajanov's prison stories. The next day after the screening, Ilyenko shows the film to Soviet central party newspaper Pravda, which publishes the news of the resignation of Vladimir Shcherbytsky, who had ordered Parajanov's initial imprisonment. Ilyenko hands Parajanov the newspaper and turns on a household video camera. What follows is a friendly conversation between the two geniuses.

Sergei Parajanov. A Visit

In November 1988, director Anatoly Syrykh met with Sergei Parajanov in Tbilisi to make a documentary about him. However, Parajanov was clearly not in the mood to talk about his art. As a compromise, Syrykh offers to talk about the artist and time. The tired, offended director of "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" forbids Syrykh to film him. He agrees only to speak, recalling the most unpleasant moments of his life.

Parajanov: The Last Spring

Made in wartime and edited in candlelight, Vartanov's rarely-seen masterpiece tells about his friendship with the genius Parajanov who was imprisoned by KGB "at the height of his fame ". Vartanov resurrects the riveting scenes from his banned 1969 film The Color of Armenian Land, where Paradjanov concocts the chef-d'oeuvre The Color of Pomegranates - widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time - then reveals the shocking request Parajanov sent him in unpublished 1974 letters from Ukrainian prisons. Vartanov's camera documents Parajanov's staggering last day at work in 1990 during the making of the unfinished Confession - which survives in The Last Spring - as Parajanov comments on this cherished autobiographical film. The foremost achievement of The Last Spring, emphasized by critics, is Vartanov's exquisite wordless montage that "evoked the very soul" of Parajanov and earned the praise of many of cinema's greatest masters, such as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.

Solitude perdue

I am Sergei Parajanov!

Documentary made and dedicated to Sergei Parajanov shortly after his death, featuring archive photographs, his collages, and clips from several of his films.

MIGNOR

Showing Sergei Parajanov at the end of his life, the film depicts the suffering of a genius against the backdrop of general anxiety and carelessness.