Paradjanov Evening: The Colour of Armenian Land + The Color of Pomegranates

Movies are sometimes not just movies. In The Color of Pomegranates, pomegranates glow about the red cheeks of women — images with a juice and clockwork force that prove why Paradjanov has been called the Cézanne of film art. Church rooms, court rooms, village scenes -- all these places are people in folkloric suits with embroidery and jewelry filmed in concentrated tableaus in languishing Sovcolor. On paper, it's immediately simple enough: The film follows the 19th-century Armenian troubadour and poet Sayat Nova from youth to old age.

But the form elevates it to concentrated sensing, a blend of visual beauty, forces of nature and local rituals. Actress Sofiko Chiaureli occupies six roles in the film, both male and female, and the film is divided into chapters with mythologising force: 'The Monastery', 'The Dream', 'The Angel of Death'.

The Color of Pomegranates, according to insiders, is packed with subtle rejuvenations to what Armenia once was (among other things, dripping pomegranate juice on white cloth and forming the nation's ancient contours), but it can easily be enjoyed without the preconditions of a sensory bombardment of another world.

The World Cinema Project has undertaken the restoration of the film, which we can therefore show in a new digital copy.

Director: Sergei Paradjanov
Starring: Sofiko Chiaureli, Vilen Galstyan, Giorgi Gegechkori, Spartak Bagashvili, Medea Djaparidze
Country/year: Russia, 1968
Running time: 79 min.
Formato: DCP
Language: English subtitles
Age limit: Allowed for children over 15
Original title: Sayat nova

Part of the series: the cinematography of Sergei Paradjanov
Paradjanov released the medium of film and its colors. He created symbol-charged, folkloric film poems in which images, music and traditions merge into something unlike any other director's work. This series brings together his most central films, but at the same time offers a rare opportunity to experience aspects of his career that have hitherto been invisible in Danish cinema culture.