1924–1990
Sergei Parajanov
Visionary film director
Film director whose Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors revealed the poetry of the Ukrainian Carpathians to the world. After he defended persecuted artists, the authorities imprisoned him on fabricated charges, but his films became classics of world cinema.
Key accomplishments
- The film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964): 16 awards at international film festivals
- The film The Color of Pomegranates (1969)
- A distinctive “poetic cinema” style that influenced filmmaking
Who he was
Sergei Parajanov was born in Tbilisi into an Armenian family. He studied at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, and from the 1950s he worked in Kyiv at the Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio. It was in Ukraine that he made the film that brought him world fame.
His story
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964), based on the novella by Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi, is a love story set against the Hutsul culture of the Carpathians. The film was shot in Ukrainian with the Hutsul dialect, and with folk rituals, songs and costumes. It won 16 awards at international film festivals.
At the film’s Kyiv premiere in 1965 there was a protest against the arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Parajanov supported persecuted artists, and the authorities took revenge: at the end of 1973 he was arrested, and in 1974 he was convicted on fabricated charges and sent to a labor camp. The director was released at the end of 1977 after an international campaign in his defense; in 1982 he was arrested again.
Why it matters today
Parajanov showed the world that Ukrainian culture is deep, distinctive and beautiful. His film still appears on lists of the best films in the history of cinema.
