The Colour of Pomegranates

Sergei Parajanov’s surreal masterpiece on the life of Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova, made in 1960 USSR.

"Few films have ever been as scorned and vilified by official powers, and few artists treated as disgracefully (Parajanov was later sentenced to five years of hard labour in Siberia). But a work as great as this one, a cine-poem of the life of the 18th-century Armenian/Georgian poet and singer Sayat-Nova, shines through such desecrations. Michelangelo Antonioni put it simply: “Parajanov’s Colour of Pomegranates is of a stunningly perfect beauty." And the film has, at long last, been restored to a form that comes closer than ever to the intentions of its creator, by the Cineteca di Bologna and the World Cinema Project." (New York Film Festival)

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