Sergei Iosifovich Parajanov (January 9, 1924 – July 20, 1990) was a Soviet film director and screenwriter. His films are known for their poetic, non-linear, and symbolic nature. Widely considered by filmmakers, film critics, and film historians to be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, he has been described as a "magician", a "master", and a "conjurer of cinematic worlds".
Parajanov was born to Armenian parents in Tiflis, Georgian SSR. He studied at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow under the tutelage of Ukrainian filmmakers Igor Savchenko and Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and began his career as professional film director in 1954. Parajanov became increasingly disenchanted of his films as well as the state sanctioned art style of socialist realism, prominent throughout the Soviet Union. The film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965), Parajanov's first major work which diverged from socialist realism, gave him international acclaim. He would later disown and proclaim his films made before 1965 as "garbage". Parajanov's subsequent film, The Color of Pomegranates (1969), was met with widespread acclaim among filmmakers and is often considered one of the greatest films ever made.
The Soviet authorities claimed Parajanov was bisexual, which exposed him to increased legal scrutiny over his personal life, films, and political involvement surrounding Ukrainian nationalism. Nearly all of Parajanov's film projects from 1965 to 1973 were banned by the Soviet film administrations, many without discussion.
Sergei Iosifovich Parajanov was born to artistically inclined Armenian parents Iosif Parajanov and Siranush Bejanova on January 9, 1924, in Tiflis, known as Tbilisi since 1936, the capital of the Georgian SSR of the Soviet Union. Iosif was a merchant who owned an antique shop, trading jewelry and valuables. Due to the Soviet Union's ban on financial speculation, Iosif's business was frequently subjected to arbitrary searches by the authorities, who often raided his business and seized many of his valuables. Because it was impossible for Iosif to get his trading business legalised, a young Parajanov was often forced to swallow small jewelry pieces and defecate them once authorities withdrew from their search. Parajanov attended a local railway college before running away to attend the Tbilisi State Conservatoire. In 1945, he was transferred to the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied alongside soprano Nina Dorliak. Parajanov left the conservatory to enroll at the directing department at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography; he studied under the tutelage of Ukrainian filmmakers Igor Savchenko and Alexander Dovzhenko.
The Soviet authorities accused Parajanov of being bisexual. In 1948, he was arrested and charged with illegal homosexual acts with MGB officer Nikolai Mikava in Tbilisi. He was sentenced to five years in prison and released under an amnesty after three months. In video interviews, friends and relatives contest the truthfulness of anything Parajanov was charged with; they believe his sentencing was procured through a kangaroo court due to his tendency for political retaliation and rebellious views.
In 1950, Parajanov married Nigyar Kerimova, who came from a Muslim Tatar family, in Moscow. Nigyar's relatives, who disapproved of the marriage, murdered her after she converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Parajanov subsequently moved to Kiev, where he produced a few Russian- and Ukrainian-language documentaries (Dumka, Golden Hands, Natalia Uzhvy), and a handful of narrative films: Andriesh, The Top Guy, Ukrainian Rhapsody, and Flower on the Stone. He became fluent in Ukrainian and married Svitlana Ivanivna Shcherbatiuk (1938–2020) in 1956. The couple had a son named Suran (1958–2021).
In a 1988 interview, Parajanov stated, "Everyone knows that I have three motherlands. I was born in Georgia, worked in Ukraine and I'm going to die in Armenia."
Andrei Tarkovsky's first film, Ivan's Childhood, had an enormous impact on Parajanov's self-discovery as a filmmaker. Later the influence became mutual, and he and Tarkovsky became close friends. Another influence was Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, whom Parajanov would later describe as "like a God" to him and a director of "majestic style". In 1965 Parajanov abandoned socialist realism and directed the poetic Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, his first film over which he had complete creative control. It won numerous international awards and was well received by the Soviet authorities, who praised the film for "conveying the poetic quality and philosophical depth of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s tale through the language of cinema," and called it "a brilliant creative success of the Dovzhenko film studio." Authorities allowed the release of the film with its original Ukrainian soundtrack intact, rather than redubbing the dialogue into Russian for Soviet-wide release, in order to preserve its Ukrainian integrity. (Russian dubbing was standard practice at that time for non-Russian Soviet films when they were distributed outside the republic of origin.)
In 1969, Parajanov moved to Armenia to work on his next film; this was the first time he had visited the country and instilled in him the influence to direct Sayat Nova. It was shot under relatively poor conditions and had a very small budget. Unlike Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Sayat Nova was not well received by the authorities, who were quick to intervene, and ban the film for its allegedly inflammatory content and lack of socialist realism. Parajanov re-edited the film and renamed it The Color of Pomegranates.
Imprisonment, career hiatus, and other artistic ambitions
Since the early 1960s, Parajanov had increasingly become the subject of attention by the KGB, for a variety of political activities related to his affinity towards Ukrainian nationalism. He was an active protester following the 1965–1966 Ukrainian purge. In 1969, a report by the Committee for State Security to the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist party indicated their belief that Parajanov was a negative influence on his younger colleagues, as well as a key purveyor of ideologically harmful opinion. He was also deemed as someone with a desire to defect if he were to travel abroad.
In December 1973, Parajanov was arrested in Kiev and was accused of homosexuality, sodomy, and propagation of pornography. He was sentenced to five years in a hard labour camp. Three days before Parajanov was due to be sentenced, Tarkovsky wrote a letter to the Central Committee, asserting that "In the last ten years Sergei Parajanov has made only two films: Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors and The Colour of Pomegranates. They have influenced cinema first in Ukraine, second in this country as a whole, and third in the world at large. Artistically, there are few people in the entire world who could replace Parajanov. He is guilty – guilty of his solitude. We are guilty of not thinking of him daily and of failing to discover the significance of a master." An eclectic group of artists, actors, filmmakers and activists protested on behalf of Parajanov, calling for his immediate release. Among them were Tarkovsky, Pasolini, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Leonid Gaidai, Eldar Ryazanov, Yves Saint Laurent, Marcello Mastroianni, Françoise Sagan, Heinrich Böll, Louis Aragon, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Mikhail Vartanov.
Because of his homosexuality, he had very low status among the inmates, and was beaten. Nevertheless, he soon gained respect from others:
As word got around the camp, one of the counts in that very indictment allegedly read: "Film director Sergei Parajanov raped a member of the Communist Party." A distinguished delegation of influential inmates paid Parajanov a visit and offered him assurances of their deep respect, phrased as follows: "We only ever screwed the commies with words — but you did it for real!" Inspired by this recognition, Parajanov soon turned this into a whole epic: he claimed that he'd spent his entire life taking revenge on the Bolsheviks and had personally raped three hundred members of the Communist Party.