Sergei Iosifovich Parajanov was born to artistically inclined
Armenian parents Iosif Parajanov and Siranush Bejanova on January 9, 1924, in the
Georgian capital of Tiflis, which has been known by
Tbilisi since 1936. At the time, Georgia, known by the
Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, was a
constituent republic 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, Parajanov 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, Ukraine, 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." 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. 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. Parajanov served four years out of his five-year sentence, and later credited his early release to the efforts made by Aragon,
Elsa Triolet, and
John Updike. His efforts in the camp were repeatedly compromised by prison guards, who deprived him of materials and called him mad, their cruelty only subsiding after a statement from Moscow admitting that "the director is very talented." They sent a telegram to Russia with the following statement: "The world of cinema has lost a magician. Parajanov’s fantasy will forever fascinate and bring joy to the people of the world…”. == Legacy ==