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Золотые руки (Golden Hands) 1957

A reverential documentary about one of Sergei Parajanov’s great loves: Ukrainian folk art. Co-directed with Oleksandr Nikolenko and Oleksij Pankratiev, Golden Hands showcases vases through to textiles while the rapturous voiceover declares “What a lively variety of the colours and forms of the rich Ukrainian spirit!” alongside “Folk Art is the bared soul of a people. It’s love, hatred and hope.” The film includes re-enactment of potters toiling away for a meagre living placing this rich body of artmaking in a historical and political context while foregrounding the artist’s experience of imbuing their beautiful objects with meaning and life.

36 minutes | All Ages

Kyivs’ki Fresky (Kyiv Frescoes) 1966

Kyiv Frescoes marked an extraordinary turning point in the development of Sergei Parajanov’s film language. Initially commissioned by Dovzhenko Film Studio in 1965 as a feature film commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Great Patriotic War (World War Two) in Soviet Ukraine, Parajanov decided to make an portrait of Kiev akin to Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera 1929. Upon seeing the rushes of the film, the film studio promptly destroyed the negative. Parajanov took the remaining fragments of screen tests and made this 13 minute ‘collage’ film, which plays freely with symbolism, discontinuous editing, and resists narrative structures – an approach he would hone in his next feature The Colour of Pomegranates 1969. Parajanov said of this short film “When the romantic fuses with the everyday, the everyday with the private, the epic with the details, the sum total amounts to film-poetry”

15 minutes | All Ages

Hakob Hovnatanyan 1967

A poetic short film about the work of the leading Tbilisi Armenian portraitist of the 19th century. Sergei Parajanov’s impressionistic film was commissioned to revive the culture and colour of the city of Tbilisi at that time.

10 minutes | All Ages

Arabeskebi Pirosmanis temaze (Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme) 1985

Parajanov’s exquisite portrait of the Naïve painter Niko Pirosmani (1862-1918) evokes the vision of the treasured Georgian artist. Eschewing a direct biographical approach, Parajanov intercuts details of paintings with elaborately constructed tableaux that mirror the scenes, people, and objects Pirosmani was drawn to. Arabesques on the Theme of Pirosmani is a joyous celebration of the folk traditions which underpin everyday life in Georgia.

19 minutes | All Ages