Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Parajanovia

Speaking of Monumental, Surreal, Ominous and Dramatic in the last post, I cant help but think of the fantabulous film director Sergei Parajanov, who lived in Armenia, and spent a large part of his life in Soviet jails. His list of amazing films includes Sayat Nova and Achik Kerib, and watching them is no less than a religous experience. The films consist of endless sequences of tableaux vivant and very hallucinant. Each time you see one of these still lifes, you think that "this one is the aesthetic apotheosis of the film, the pinnacle of stylized imagery" and then along comes the next to blast you even further away into the depths of Parajanov's weird and wonderful and hyper religous super gay world.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

have never seen any of his films, still have heard so much, which is the best to start with?

Andreas Angelidakis said...

Sayat Nova (Color of Pomegranade) is really great, also achik kerib... I've only seen these two