Following the opening of A Cage In Search of a Nightingale, we present the UK theatrical premiere of three restored Parajanov shorts. 

Made in Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine, this triptych features two creative documentaries on regional painters – the Raphael of Tiflis, Hakob Hovnatanyan, and the Georgian naif painter Niko Pirosmani – alongside a collage of screen tests from Parajanov’s unfinished feature Kyiv Frescoes.

Hakob Hovnatanyan served as the diploma project for Yuri Sayadian, the sound engineer who would collaborate with Tigran Mansurian on the musique concrete score for The Colour of Pomegranates.

In many ways a companion piece to Hakob Hovnatanyan, Arabesques is Parajanov’s most nostalgic film. Through pantomime it explores how the new technology of photography threatened to displace the role of painter.

The centrepiece is Kyiv Frescoes, the inception point of Parajanov’s tableaux style, and a dry run for surrealistic imagery that was ultimately recycled in The Colour of Pomegranates.

Accompanying this programme is a remarkable 1967 documentary on rug weaving by Ruzanna Frangulyan, here screened outside of Armenia for the first time.

Films:

Hakob Hovnatanyan (Dir: Sergei Parajanov, Armenia 1967, 10 mins)

Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme (Dir: Sergei Parajanov, Georgia 1985, 21 mins)

Kyiv Frescoes (Dir: Sergei Parajanov, Ukraine 1966, 14 mins)

Meeting With a Morning Star (Dir: Ruzanna Frangulyan, Armenia 1967, 10 mins)