Ashik Kerib
Saturday , August 17 at 5pm SERGEI PARAJANOV : SURREALIST POET OF SOVIET CINEMA Ashik Kerib dir . Sergei Parajanov , Soviet Union , 1988 , 35mm , Georgian with English subtitles , 73 min .
Parajanov ’ s last completed film was dedicated to his friend Andrei Tarkovsky who died two years earlier . It is a retelling of a popular romantic myth in Azerbaijani culuture with music and color playing important roles .
The Ashik Kerib wants to marry his beloved , but her father opposes since Kerib is poor and he expects rich prospects for his “ daughter from heaven .” She vows to wait for him for a thousand days and nights until he comes back with enough money to impress her father . He sets out on a journey to gain wealth and encounters many difficulties .
In recounting Mikhail Lermontov ’ s fable , Paradjanov dispenses with conventional storytelling devices in order to present a boldly unique cinematic experience . Glorious tableaux , exquisitely composed , choreographed and photographed , are combined with intertitles , images of early Russian artwork and a haunting blend of traditional and contemporary musical forms , all of which combine to form an enthralling and utterly unique cinematic experience .
The Color of Pomegranates
Saturday , August 17 at 8pm SERGEI PARAJANOV : SURREALIST POET OF SOVIET CINEMA The Color of Pomegranates dir . Sergei Parajanov , Soviet Union , 1968 , 35mm , Armenian with English subtitles , 74 min .
Keynote presentation by James M . Steffen whose forthcoming book The Cinema of Segei Parajanov ( University of Wisconsin Press ) will be released in October 2013 .
Sergei Paradjanov ’ s baroque masterpiece The Color Of Pomegranates was banned in the Soviet Union for its religious sentiment and nonconformity to “ Socialist realism ;” its director , a tirelessly outspoken campaigner for human rights , was convicted on a number of trumped-up charges and sentenced to five years of hard labor in the gulag . A wave of protest from the international film community led to his release in 1978 .
Aesthetically the most extreme film ever made in the USSR , Parajanov ’ s hallucinatory epic account of the life of the 18th century Armenian national poet , Sayat Nova , conveys the glory of what a cinema of high art can be like . Conceived as an extraordinarily complex series of painterly tableaux that recall Byzantine mosaics , the film is a dreamlike icon come-to-life with astonishing beauty and rigor . It evokes the poet ’ s childhood and youth , his days as a troubadour at the court of King Heraclius II of Georgia , his retreat to a monastery and his old age and death .
There has never been a film like this magical work . It fully justifies critic Alexei Korotyukov ’ s remark : “ Paradjanov made films not about how things are , but how they would have been had he been God .”
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