Three Homelands: A Sergei Parajanov Retrospective

Nov 23

-

Dec 18, 2024

Ongoing

Presented by

UCLA Film & TV Archive

Bisexual Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov was jailed for his art, his sexuality, and his support of nationalist movements within the USSR. None of his films are explicitly Queer by modern standards, but they play with gender, kitsch, and folklore in beautiful ways. In 1969's The Color of Pomegranates, actress Sofiko Chiaureli plays multiple roles, both male and female. The film was heavily censored by Soviet authorities, and was not fully restored until 2014.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive and American Cinematheque partner to present a retrospective of Parajanov's body of work, one hundred years after his birth, running Nov 23 - Dec 18.

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MORE INFO AND TICKETS

Upcoming Screenings

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Past Screenings

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Egyptian Theatre

Bisexual Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov was jailed for his art, his sexuality, and his support of nationalist movements within the USSR. None of his films are explicitly Queer by modern standards, but they play with gender, kitsch, and folklore in beautiful ways.

In the Carpathian Mountains of 19th-century Ukraine, love, hate, life and death among the Hutsul people are as they’ve been since time began. Ivan is drawn to Marichka, the beautiful young daughter of the man who killed his father. But fate tragically decrees that the two lovers will remain apart.

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The Color of Pomegranates

Bisexual Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov was jailed for his art, his sexuality, and his support of nationalist movements within the USSR. None of his films are explicitly Queer by modern standards, but they play with gender, kitsch, and folklore in beautiful ways.

The life of the revered 18th-century Armenian poet and musician Sayat-Nova. Portraying events in the life of the artist from childhood up to his death, the movie addresses in particular his relationships with women, including his muse. The production tells Sayat-Nova’s dramatic story by using both his poems and largely still camerawork, creating a work hailed as revolutionary by Mikhail Vartanov.

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Parajanov: The Last Spring

Bisexual Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov was jailed for his art, his sexuality, and his support of nationalist movements within the USSR. None of his films are explicitly Queer by modern standards, but they play with gender, kitsch, and folklore in beautiful ways.

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.

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Andriesh // The First Lad

Bisexual Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov was jailed for his art, his sexuality, and his support of nationalist movements within the USSR. None of his films are explicitly Queer by modern standards, but they play with gender, kitsch, and folklore in beautiful ways.

An adaptation of a fairy tale by Moldovan writer Emilian Bukov.

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The Legend of Suram Fortress

Bisexual Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov was jailed for his art, his sexuality, and his support of nationalist movements within the USSR. None of his films are explicitly Queer by modern standards, but they play with gender, kitsch, and folklore in beautiful ways.

A film version of a well-known Georgian folk-tale. A young boy has to be immured into the walls of a fortress in order to stop it from crumbling to pieces.

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Ukrainian Rhapsody

Bisexual Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov was jailed for his art, his sexuality, and his support of nationalist movements within the USSR. None of his films are explicitly Queer by modern standards, but they play with gender, kitsch, and folklore in beautiful ways.

Singer Oksana has lost her beloved in the war. Everyone thinks he perished, but actually he was taken prisoner, then ran away, hid, fell into American hands, and… Finally, he returns to his village, and meets Oksana.

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The Flower on the Stone

Bisexual Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov was jailed for his art, his sexuality, and his support of nationalist movements within the USSR. None of his films are explicitly Queer by modern standards, but they play with gender, kitsch, and folklore in beautiful ways.

Set in a new mining town in the Donets Coal Basin, it centres on a clash between the young miners, the political establishment, and a religious cult lead by a devious Pentecostal evangelist infiltrated into the community who tries to make the workers fall under his influence.

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Ashik Kerib

Bisexual Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov was jailed for his art, his sexuality, and his support of nationalist movements within the USSR. None of his films are explicitly Queer by modern standards, but they play with gender, kitsch, and folklore in beautiful ways.

Wandering minstrel Ashik Kerib falls in love with a rich merchant’s daughter, but is spurned by her father and forced to roam the world for a thousand and one nights. Now presumed dead by those he loves, he performs for the poor and unfortunate on his journeys through the wilderness. Parajanov’s visually ravishing ‘tableaux vivants’ tell Lermontov’s romantic tale while Turkish and Azerbaijani folk songs transport us into its mystical landscapes.

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