Sergei Parajanov’s first masterpiece “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” ranks as one of the world’s most extraordinary cinematic feasts, featuring almost impossible camera angles, hallucinatory travellings and striking colors that altogether bend to one of 20th century’s great artistic visions, completed in his 1968 masterpiece “The Colour of Pomegranates” and sadly neglected (first by Soviet authorities and later by time). Sergei Parajanov should be celebrated as one of the few founders of a whole new cinematic language (others would certainly be Antonioni, Ozu, Bresson or Tarkovsky), and his important 1964 work is a true reminder of what the purpose of art should be, a quest for meaning and beauty. Parajanov, who’s work is deeply rooted in its own culture finds significance in human tragedy while accompanying the orphaned protagonist Ivan, and achieves the exceptional by transforming a quintessentially Carpathian story into an universal and in its scale Shakespearian one.