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Arabesques on the Theme of Pirosmani
by Sergei Parajanov
Georgia 1985, 21′
Presented at Secret Florence VII edizione, 2022
© JSC Georgian Film e Mematiane
Copy preserved by Georgian Film
The documentary is a tribute to the Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918), a primitivist painter who depicted kings, commoners, and animals in a style that appears seemingly childlike but today seems extremely modern to us. Shots of his paintings alternate with footage of subjects and people to convey a melancholic and metaphysical nature in the artist’s work.
Sergei Parajanov
Born in 1924 in Tbilisi, Georgia, then part of the Soviet Union, he is known for his poetic, surrealist, and visionary style with which he reinterpreted the folk traditions and legends of his land and the Caucasian regions. Due to his explicit criticisms of the Soviet authorities, his works were heavily censored, and he himself was imprisoned multiple times. In the 1970s, he spent more than five years in a Ukrainian prison.
Widely celebrated during his lifetime by the international film community, he won numerous awards at major festivals including Venice (1988), New York (1988), Rotterdam (1987), and Istanbul (1989). His films have been the subject of numerous retrospectives, including those at MoMA New York, the Harvard Film Archive, the Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kiev, the Tbilisi History Museum, the Odessa International Film Festival, and the Arsenal Berlin.
The Cineteca di Bologna and The Film Foundation, founded by Martin Scorsese to preserve the world’s cinematic heritage, restored his most famous work, The Color of Pomegranates (1969), in 2014. It premiered at the 67th Cannes Film Festival (2014).
Born in 1924 in Tbilisi, Georgia, then part of the Soviet Union, he is known for his poetic, surrealist, and visionary style with which he reinterpreted the folk traditions and legends of his land and the Caucasian regions. Due to his explicit criticisms of the Soviet authorities, his works were heavily censored, and he himself was imprisoned multiple times. In the 1970s, he spent more than five years in a Ukrainian prison.
Widely celebrated during his lifetime by the international film community, he won numerous awards at major festivals including Venice (1988), New York (1988), Rotterdam (1987), and Istanbul (1989). His films have been the subject of numerous retrospectives, including those at MoMA New York, the Harvard Film Archive, the Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kiev, the Tbilisi History Museum, the Odessa International Film Festival, and the Arsenal Berlin.
The Cineteca di Bologna and The Film Foundation, founded by Martin Scorsese to preserve the world’s cinematic heritage, restored his most famous work, The Color of Pomegranates (1969), in 2014. It premiered at the 67th Cannes Film Festival (2014).