The Color of Pomegranates (Sayat Nova) - English subtitled + Introduction
Absorbing, associative portrait of the eighteenth-century Armenian poet Sayat-Nova. Widely regarded as one of the most enigmatic cinematic meditations on art and beauty. Including introduction.
This classic by Parajanov is not a dramatized portrait of the poet Arutyun Sayadyan, better known as Sayat-Nova, the ‘King of Songs’, but an associative portrait full of metaphors and dreams. It is a film designed like an oriental tapestry: quirky and unpredictable in line and colour, but at the same time expressing great aesthetic harmony. THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES is also a statement about the Messianic role of the artist, in this case the filmmaker Parajanov, who regarded this film as his finest.
Two common versions of this film exist: the Armenian one, by the director himself, and a Russian re-edit from 1973. The latter was made after Parajanov’s version was banned in the Soviet Union. The director was subsequently reviled by the state and jailed many times for his critical and non-conformist style, in and outside his work. Both versions have been restored by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, but it is the Armenian original that offers the most direct translation of Parajanov’s masterful vision.
Prior to the screening programmer Wouter Greven will introduce the film.