fri 13/12/2024

Sergei Paradjanov: Retrospective for a Visionary | reviews, news & interviews

Sergei Paradjanov: Retrospective for a Visionary

Sergei Paradjanov: Retrospective for a Visionary

The eccentric view of a Soviet-era oddball genius

Composition over narrative: the rich, human face of Georgian filmmaker Sergei ParadjanovYuri Mechitov

Soviet-era film director Sergei Paradjanov is a figure whose complicated biography has often overshadowed his innovative and distinctive cinematic style. The first full UK retrospective of his work at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank, marking the 20th anniversary of the director’s death, gives a chance to reassess the paradoxes of his heritage, and delight in a character whose rebellious passion for life and for artistic beauty brought him through some of the worst trials that the Soviet system could impose on an artist. Meanwhile, an exhibition of photographs by his long-term collaborator Yury Mechitov catches the last decade or so of Paradjanov’s life in his native city of Tbilisi, and shows the richly human face of so complex a personality.

Soviet-era film director Sergei Paradjanov is a figure whose complicated biography has often overshadowed his innovative and distinctive cinematic style. The first full UK retrospective of his work at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank, marking the 20th anniversary of the director’s death, gives a chance to reassess the paradoxes of his heritage, and delight in a character whose rebellious passion for life and for artistic beauty brought him through some of the worst trials that the Soviet system could impose on an artist. Meanwhile, an exhibition of photographs by his long-term collaborator Yury Mechitov catches the last decade or so of Paradjanov’s life in his native city of Tbilisi, and shows the richly human face of so complex a personality.

The director answers, “At present, I’m free,” as if some future political regime could once again become his captor. In reality, it was a very different opponent he was facing

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