“If you want to be free, be it,” Soviet movie director Sergei Parajanov as soon as stated. Now, as Parajanov’s a hundredth birthday is widely known posthumously 34 years after his dying, his legacy as a movie director is overshadowed by his iconic standing as a dissident artist and Soviet political prisoner through the mid-Nineteen Seventies.
Despite the huge curiosity in Parajanov, there was little examination of his curiosity in Azerbaijan. The subject can also be taboo in Armenia. Parajanov, although, didn’t simply spiral from nowhere. His background and life within the South Caucasus performed a significant position in shaping his view of the world. Azerbaijani tradition additionally had a major affect on him, expressed, partially, by his want to make a movie about Ashiq Garib.
Sergei Parajanov and Dodo Abashidze’s 1988 drama, Ashik Kerib, is an extravagant artwork movie overflowing with all kinds of earthly delights. Parajanov’s ultimate function movie crowns Russian author Mikhail Lermontov’s obscure interpretation of star-crossed Caucasian lovers.
The tender paradigm in Parajanov’s earlier movies like “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” (1965) and his acclaimed “The Colour of Pomegranates” (1969) reaches its zenith right here: By mixing centuries-old rites with politically themed relics, Abashidze and Parajanov recreate a previous past the bounds of the historic story. If the tones of Azerbaijani tradition will not be your cup of tea, don’t worry: such is the facility of Parajanov’s filmography, a language of delicacy all can grasp.
According to Azerbaijani composer Javanshir Guliyev, who labored with Parajanov on Ashik Karib, the filmmaker had a tender spot for Azerbaijani mugham.
“He always carried an audio cassette with recordings of Alim Gasimov in his pocket, which made his eyes teary. But the most amazing thing is that Sergei Parajanov lived and worked in Baku for a whole month, just three months after the Sumgayit events of 1988. He stayed at the Azerbaijan Hotel, currently known as the Hyatt Regency,” Guliyev added.
One might say that Ashik Kerib was an odyssey into Parajanov’s personal private coronary heart of responsible pleasure: his affection towards Azerbaijani tradition. As his most private movie, which was devoted to his shut pal Andrei Tarkovsky, it was additionally his most cherished movie, albeit by deliberate misdirection.
In Azerbaijani filmmaker Turkan Huseyn’s opinion, Parajanov noticed the Caucasus as a part of a world that isn’t but nationalized and confirmed that “you can go beyond the boundaries and create your own visual language.”
“He was inspired by the cultures around him, creating scenes of folk figures tangled in the hustle of a city.”
While confronting Soviet censors, Parajanov managed to move in opposition to the nationalist sentiments that ran within the Caucasus in his lifetime – identical to one other famed cosmopolitan earlier than him, the Seventeenth-century bard Sayat Nova, a legendary determine who additionally grew to become a muse for Parajanov’s film, the “Colour of Pomegranates.”
Eventually, Soviet authorities couldn’t tolerate Parajanov’s nonconformist stance and his sexual orientation. The movie director was sentenced to 5 years in a labor camp on fees associated to homosexuality and pornography, which had been extensively seen as politically motivated fees. The expertise took a toll on his well being, and he died of lung most cancers in 1990 on the age of 66.
Film critic Haji Safarov notes that Parajanov was concerned with ethnic codes embedded in reminiscence and their decision in cinema. “His films gain strength from self-awareness and appreciating the past with a different perspective,” Safarov says.
Today, Sergei Parajanov has entered common consciousness as one of many nice pioneers of contemporary cinema. The movie director’s affect extends past the silver display, inspiring subsequent administrators and music icons like Madonna and Lady Gaga.
With provocative notions, daring cinematic choices and enigmatic imagery, Parajanov eternally reworked the cinema panorama, bestowing upon us a number of the most recognizable characters and reflecting on life by way of the lens of authenticity. The mixture of his visualization and brashness as an artist left a mark on the historical past of the medium, and cemented Parajanov’s legacy as a filmmaker who continues to encourage, provoke and exceed temporal boundaries.
Source: www.dailysabah.com
