One of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century, Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of the Pomegranate, a biography of the Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova (King of Song) reveals the poet’s life more through his poetry than a conventional narration of important events in Sayat Nova’s life. We see the poet grow up, fall in love, enter a monastery and die, but these incidents are depicted in the context of what are images from Sergei Parajanov’s imagination and Sayat Nova’s poems, poems that are seen and rarely heard. Sofiko Chiaureli plays 6 roles, both male and female, and Sergei Parajanov writes, directs, edits, choreographs, works on costumes, design and decor and virtually every aspect of this revolutionary work void of any dialog or camera movement. —IMDb
One of the 20th century’s greatest masters of cinema, Sergei Parajanov in the 1960s made two masterpieces in a row: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964) and Color of Pomegranates (1968). Both established him as a phenomenon with no analogy in the art world.
Parajanov was born on the January 9, 1924, in Tbilisi, Georgia, USSR, to an ethnic Armenian family. His father was Iosif Parajanian and his mother was Siranush Bejanian. In 1945 Parajanov traveled to Moscow and entered the directing department at VGIK, one of the oldest and most highly respected film schools in Europe, and studied under director Igor Savchenko and later Aleksandr Dovzhenko in Kiev, Ukraine. Parajanov moved to Kiev, where after a few documentaries (Dumka (1957), Zolotye ruki (1957), Natalya Ushviy (1957)) and several narrative films (Andriesh (1954), Ukrainskaya rapsodiya (1961), Tsvetok na kamne (1962)) he created the magnificent “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, which won countless international awards… read more
Loved the film, truly a visual poet at his finest. It was distracting to watch the horrible transfer by Kino and wonder how much more amazing the film would look if Criterion picked it up... It's certainly a film worthy of a good transfer and the Kino transfer is almost offensive to the film itself.
I would rather spend 74 minutes awaiting my death in the cold, alone, locked in the trunk of a serial killer's car.
The Colour of Pomegranites: like dreams and moving paintings. Like Ken Russell's Mahler, it is a biography of emotions and atmospheres and things that cannot be expressed with words and a concrete sequence of events. It is an insider look rather than an ousider, superficial look, and ultimately tells one much more than if the film had been a traditional narrative following the poet's concrete life from the outside.
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As I write, the city I live in, Berlin, is throwing a party for itself. As it should. Few events in the lifetimes of most of us deserve to
The Color of Pomegranates is a movie that will be in strict defiance of full comprehension for mostly everyone in the world; I would imagine that one would need a vast and intricate knowledge of both… read review
“Sayat Nova” (The Color of Pomegranates) by Sergei Parajanov is unlike any movie i’ve ever had the pleasure to view before. I resembles a poetic, surrealistic dream. Through the 73 minutes of a film… read review
This film is like an intersection between film, painting, poetry, and modern dance. The combination is stunningly powerful and the images are fresh, striking, and moving. What Parajanov succeeds in… read review
Sayat Nova is a poetic, spiritual film of a great filmmaker that goes by the name of Parajanov. In this film he portrays the culture in Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine with religious symbolism. The images… read review