Parajanov – The Last Collage
Ruben Gevorkyants, Krikor Hamel, 1995, 68 min
UK premiere of the new restoration

“When this was made, he had been dead for five years. His Chagallian spirit was still flying through the streets of Yerevan and Tbilisi, where the gorgeous black-and-white of this film was shot. It is in those alleys that Parajanov comes back to life. The film was made four years after the dismal fall of the Soviet system – a system that proved its utter stupidity, among countless other things, by imprisoning this woolly, rolling ball of life. Yet his voice lives on, speaking fluent French. And while it might take a few minutes to get used to it, the essence of the words – drawn from Parajanov’s own writings – strikes straight at the heart. Various dignitaries appear, and they all come across as more sincere than one expects in talking head interviews. The work of Ruben Gevorkyants and Krikor Hamel delves deep into Parajanov's cinema – the naked hymns to beauty, with a violence of emotion in which pomegranates explode like grenades and stain Armenian fabrics with the blood of the poet.” – Ehsan Khoshbakht

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Screening as part of our Histoire(s) du cinéma series