Paradjanov: A Requiem

Sergei Parajanov, who died in 1990, is arguably the only Soviet film director working during the stagnant decades before perestroika, who, for a time, reignited the Soviet cinema. With such films as his amazing "Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors," he singlehandedly advanced the torch of artistic originality, lyricism and experimentalism once attributed to his film institute teacher, Alexander Dovzhenko. A rogue Armenian come who blazed into Moscow from his birthplace Tblisi, Georgia, Parajanov was a "problem" for the Soviets from the start. They censored, slandered and jailed him for five years at hard labor for "deviationism."