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Cast:
Serge Avedikian, Yuliya Peresild, Zaza Kashybadze, Karen Badalov, Napo Elbano
Production:
Interfilm Production Studio, Araprod, Arte France, Gemini, Millimeter Film, Paradise
Program:
Studio Cinema -
Thursday, April 10, 2014 - 20:00
Studio Cinema -
Friday, April 11, 2014 - 16:00
Original title:
Paradjanov
Section:
Written by:
Olena Fetisova
Synopsis:
In 1960, Soviet Armenian film director Serghei Paradjanov’s never ending feast of a life is twice changed: he is to become the father of a boy and of a movie. A hit in Europe, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS receives a cold welcome in the USSR. He leaves Ukraine for Armenia, where his bohemian lifestyle is unchanged and where he shoots SAYAT NOVA. Little does he know his every step is closely watched by the KGB. Arrested on suspicion of sodomy, Paradjanov spends five long years in prison, where he finds salvation in art. Upon his release, he returns to Georgia, where he directs THE LEGEND OF SURAM FORTRESS, a new frowned upon title back at home, a new masterpiece of world cinema. PARADJANOV was Ukraine’s official proposal for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2014 Academy Awards.
Director:
Serge Avedikian spends his childhood in Yerevan, then emigrates with his parents in France, where he makes his debut as an actor in the Conservatory of Dramatic of Meudon. In 1971, he settles in Paris, where he teaches at the Conservatory. He founds his own theater company in 1976, then his production company in 1998. Winner of the 2010 Palme d’Or for the best short film with his CHIENNE D’HISTOIRE. Born in Kiev to a family of filmmakers, Olena Fetisova graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscov in 1987. Since then, she has been working without interruption in the film industry. In 2001, she founded her own distribution company, Interfilm Production Studio. 2009 EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs) graduate.
Statement:
They took his family from him, they took his movies from him, they threw him in prison. He did not play ball. Paradjanov stayed the same, and he is the same even today. USSR and Paradjanov are still very much alive, but only one of them is as well loved and respected. Serge Avedikian and Olena Fetisova’s film is one that doesn’t do much justice to the purely biographical events in the brilliant Armenian director’s life; instead, it focuses on something far more important. We don’t find out much about what happened in Paradjanov’s real life, but we do, however, enter, or fall, as if through a water slide, in his universe, an imaginary landscape of a richness rarely to be found in today’s cinema. With this Ukrainian biopic, we find ourselves immersed in a space where freedom is endless, and the rules of the mundane, with its prisons or its censorship, cease to exist.
Festivals, awards:
- Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2013: Special Jury Prize
- Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2013
- Hamburg Film Festival 2013
- Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival 2013
- Angers Film Festival 2014