legacy and inspiration of a great Soviet director

Zara will be in Chichester for a Q&A following the screening of I Will Revenge This World With Love – S Paradjanov (2024, 110 mins, Armenia, subtitles) on August 15.

An impressive array of auteur directors are interviewed in the film including Atom Egoyan, Tarsem Singh and Emir Kusturica, as well as other artists such as Russian actress-in-exile Chulpan Khamatova, to discuss the work of the Georgian-born Paradjanov who became a revolutionary force in international cinema with Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965), his first film to reject the socialist realism of officially sanctioned Soviet cinema in favour of a more experimental, poetic visual storytelling.

He was imprisoned by the Soviets and his films were suppressed, including The Colour of Pomegranates (also screening in this Festival), but his magical vision and his bold championing of folk tradition endure long after the fall of the USSR, Zara argues.

Unfolding global events prompted Zara to leave the country where she lives and works. Returning home to Armenia to search for a solution, she sought out an example-setting icon who could show the way forward. A museum dedicated to Sergei Paradjanov became a place of inspiration, from which, as she says, there can be no return to toxic reality.

“I didn’t know about Paradjanov as much as I know now. I used to live in Russia and I used to live in California and in those periods in my life he was appearing to me. I was always hearing about him.

“And then in 2020 there was war in Armenia and I was trying to rescue children with my colleagues and at that moment I was living in Russia. And I was in a very distracted mood. And in October 2022 I decided to come back to my motherland and I was standing at the Sergei Paradjanov Home Museum in Armenia.

“I was standing in front of his portrait and I found his cosmopolitanism in that moment. At the same time friends of mine from different parts of the world were becoming instruments of the toxic reality of the geopolitical situation and I was feeling that this was wrong. His example empowered me. Even in jail he was doing art, and the script came to me immediately and I wrote the script.

“I would say it is about continuing to do what you want to do and about doing the best you can and not giving up your talents and not giving up who you are. It seems very easy to become an instrument of geopolitical reality. I didn’t want to write a classic biopic because I was not at that moment the person that should do that. I just wanted to tell my way into Paradjanov and for him to become a guide. He is participating like a hero in the film.”