I was so bowled over and moved by the programme of Sergei Parajanov’s Ukranian films at Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna,  Parajanov 1954-1966: A Ukrainian Rhapsody, co-curated by Daniel Bird and Olena Honcharuk,  that I wanted to talk to Daniel Bird about the programme in general and the driving force behind it. Another reason to talk to Daniel was because Cinema Rediscovered in Bristol is showing Shadows of the Forgotten Ancestors (1965) and The Colour of Pomegranates (1969), and I wanted to hear what one of the foremost experts on the famous director had to say about Parajanov’s most celebrated films.

The Cinema Rediscovered Screenings will be introduced by Professor Ian Christie.

In the podcast Daniel and I discuss who is Parajanov and why Parajanov? We touch on the centrality of his work to the national and cultural identities of so many countries: Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Russia; its aesthetic beauty and its continuing power. Certain filmmakers continuously crop up in relation to Parajanov’s work — Eisenstein, Jarman, Greenaway, Pasolini, Kenneth Anger, Powell and Pressburger. The conversation is bounded by the war in Ukraine; post-colonial relations; the excitement of cinema poetry; the need to archive, preserve, restore and circulate cinema; questions of anarchy in totalitarian contexts; and a fluid line of different degrees of queerness that runs across Parajanov’s oeuvre.

The podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may  also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

The conversation began with an unintended provocation – the consequences of the term ‘East European Cinema,’  what it highlights and what it obscures so we began again. Daniel explains the problems with the term and connects it to questions of post-coloniality in relation to the film heritage of nations formerly in the Soviet Union: ‘Film plays a part in the process of reforging national and ethnic identities in the post-Soviet borderlands: Central Asia, Transcaucasia, the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine….Yet there is a tendency amongst film writers, programmers and distributors to treat the cinemas of the former Soviet Union as if they still belonged to a singular, amorphous bloc….whilst Russia has relinquished the ownership rights to films from the post-Soviet borderlands, they have kept hold of the original camera negatives. In this digital age, this presents difficulties for film agencies from these regions to restore, screen and distribute their own films. It is time we started thinking about heritage cinema from former Soviet countries for what it is: a post-colonial problem.’ Daniel elaborates further here: animusmagazine.substack.com-The Animus Substack.

In the podcast we touch on the background to the Parajanov films screened at Ritrovato, Parajanov 1954-1966: A Ukrainian Rhapsody. The full program can be seen below:

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Daniel edited a collection of articles on The Colour of Pomegranates with contributions from Martin Scorsese, James Steffen and others, which may be accessed hereThe Colour of Pomegranates – PRESS-3-7.

As well as being a scholar, filmmaker and programmer, Daniel Bird is also the Project Director of the Hamo Bek-Nazarov Project, a collaboration between the National Cinema Centre of Armenia and Fixafilm. In that capacity he created an installation for The Film Festival in Rotterdam composed of outtakes from The Colour of Pomegranates. According to MUBI, ‘“Temple of Cinema #1: Sayat Nova Outtakes ‘is an exhibition showcasing all the additional footage made for a production, in this case unused footage from Sergei Parajanov’s sublime masterpiece The Color of Pomegranates (1969). These pieces have been digitally restored and a selection of them were presented in an Armenian church in the city (sic, the Arminius Church is named after a Dutch theologian but is not Armenian), with multiple screens placed flat as if the audience were browsing illuminated manuscripts on tables. The footage looked fabulous and, due to Parajanov’s style favoring insert shots and tableaux, was nearly as enthralling in its fragmented form as in the organized narrative of the finished picture’.

For Film Comment, ‘Restored from the original camera negatives by the heroic restorationist Daniel Bird, these outtakes peel back the top layer from Parajanov’s practically unsurpassed compositions to reveal not only that, yes, these otherworldly images were obtained in this very world that we ourselves live in (signaled by a jeans-clad technician on a ladder in the background fixing a light amid an otherwise transporting tableau), the final product to which they amounted was deeply informed by the decisions of the Soviet censors. Bird’s ongoing exploration of the “behind the scenes” machinations surrounding the work of one of cinema’s all-time great visual stylists promises to enhance Parajanov’s work, and this labor is already paying off: Bird also presented a program of newly restored short films by Parajanov—Hakob Hovantanyan (1967), Kiev Frescoes (1966), and Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme (1985)—and the results were revelatory, helping to fill in the gaps of our understanding of his artistic development between Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) and Pomegranates.

Some examples of these outtakes may be seen below:

José Arroyo