Kino: The Films of Sergei Paradjanov

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Tommaso
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#101 Post by Tommaso » Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:50 am

jsteffe wrote:I don't doubt that Peter Greenaway was familiar with Paradjanov and POMEGRANATES in particular, since a new print of the Yutkevich cut was distributed in the UK in the early Eighties. Derek Jarman also makes some direct allusions to it in WAR REQUIEM.
The Greenaway connection is intriguing, but sounds misleading to me. PG's tableau style probably has similar origins as Paradjanov's: the filmic imitation/representation of existing artworks/paintings, with Renaissance painting and Vermeer in Greenaway's case, Russian icons etc. in Paradjanov's. But the effect is completely different: in Greenaway, it has a distancing, reflective (if you like the term, call it 'postmodernist') and very self-conscious character, in Paradjanov it's hallucinatory, meditative, mystical. I'd also say that much of Greenaway comes from late Powell. I lost a tiny bit of my still huge admiration for "Prospero's Books" after seeing "The Tales of Hoffmann", which I find incredibly similar in places. But it was made 40 years earlier....

I find the comparison of Paradjanov to Pasolini made some posts above much more convincing (for the archaic quality of their films, the search for an almost lost tradition); also to Jarman in places: while I haven't seen "War Requiem", I'd name "Caravaggio" here. But in any case, Paradjanov is still a one-of-a-kind filmmaker, although he belongs into a 'painterly' tradition of filmmaking, as all the directors mentioned here.

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MichaelB
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#102 Post by MichaelB » Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:56 am

Greenaway trained as a painter, and wouldn't have seen any of Paradjanov's late films until he'd found his own style. A much stronger filmic influence was Raul Ruiz's The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978), which anticipates The Draughtsman's Contract by four years - and which was shot by Sacha Vierny, Greenaway's favourite cinematographer.

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Tribe
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#103 Post by Tribe » Fri Feb 08, 2008 7:56 am

Tommaso wrote:The Greenaway connection is intriguing, but sounds misleading to me. PG's tableau style probably has similar origins as Paradjanov's: the filmic imitation/representation of existing artworks/paintings, with Renaissance painting and Vermeer in Greenaway's case, Russian icons etc. in Paradjanov's. But the effect is completely different: in Greenaway, it has a distancing, reflective (if you like the term, call it 'postmodernist') and very self-conscious character, in Paradjanov it's hallucinatory, meditative, mystical. I'd also say that much of Greenaway comes from late Powell. I lost a tiny bit of my still huge admiration for "Prospero's Books" after seeing "The Tales of Hoffmann", which I find incredibly similar in places. But it was made 40 years earlier.
I certainly wasn't saying that Greenaway and Paradjanov were comparable. After all, you hit it on the head with your own frame of reference regarding the different effects each director achieves.

Tribe

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jsteffe
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#104 Post by jsteffe » Fri Feb 08, 2008 11:49 am

Tommaso wrote:
jsteffe wrote:I don't doubt that Peter Greenaway was familiar with Paradjanov and POMEGRANATES in particular, since a new print of the Yutkevich cut was distributed in the UK in the early Eighties. Derek Jarman also makes some direct allusions to it in WAR REQUIEM.
The Greenaway connection is intriguing, but sounds misleading to me. PG's tableau style probably has similar origins as Paradjanov's: the filmic imitation/representation of existing artworks/paintings, with Renaissance painting and Vermeer in Greenaway's case, Russian icons etc. in Paradjanov's. But the effect is completely different: in Greenaway, it has a distancing, reflective (if you like the term, call it 'postmodernist') and very self-conscious character, in Paradjanov it's hallucinatory, meditative, mystical. I'd also say that much of Greenaway comes from late Powell. I lost a tiny bit of my still huge admiration for "Prospero's Books" after seeing "The Tales of Hoffmann", which I find incredibly similar in places. But it was made 40 years earlier....

I find the comparison of Paradjanov to Pasolini made some posts above much more convincing (for the archaic quality of their films, the search for an almost lost tradition); also to Jarman in places: while I haven't seen "War Requiem", I'd name "Caravaggio" here. But in any case, Paradjanov is still a one-of-a-kind filmmaker, although he belongs into a 'painterly' tradition of filmmaking, as all the directors mentioned here.
You all have a good point about the different effects being achieved here by the two filmmakers, and that we should consider them more generally as filmmakers heavily influenced by painting.

Paradjanov's pictorial influences weren't limited to Medieval Armenian miniatures and Russian icon painting, or for that matter, Pasolini. He was also broadly familiar with Renaissance art and mentioned the androgyny of some male figures in that tradition (I can't recall the exact name of the painter he mentioned) when casting Sofiko Chiaureli in THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES. One of the deleted scenes, which shows the Princess Anna being bathed, suggests Botticelli's "Birth of Venus."

Also, he was very much familiar with modern painting and especially admired Matisse. There's a great collection of Matisse's work at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, which he visited and had himself photographed with. And then there is of course Islamic, especially Persian art. One of the museums in Tbilisi has a substantial collection of Persian paintings from the Qajar era and some earlier miniatures; Paradjanov apparently visited this section very frequently, as the docents I spoke to recalled.

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#105 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Fri Feb 08, 2008 2:15 pm

I watched Kerib and Fortress first (the discs came loose in shipping so were scuffed and I wanted to see if there was any damage) and I must say this is the most unique film-making I've ever seen. I can only compare this cinema to work by Maya Deren (and wonder what the hell Jack Smith would have made of SP) in terms of singularity. I just took in the images and couldn't believe my eyes. It was like science fiction for all I could know. I turned the sound off and it worked as pure visual cinema, too. I kept wondering, "Was this really made in my lifetime?" It was so alien to me, but comfortable and astounding. The camera just sits stationary and takes in these wonders. Sui generis if I've ever seen anything at all. SP is bounds from the wonders of Jarman and Tarkovsky that had previously astounded me. I'm a little in awe. I need a cinematic equivalent of McDonald's fries to bring me down now. I can only guess what Shadows and Pomengranates will do to me.

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Tommaso
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#106 Post by Tommaso » Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:48 pm

jsteffe wrote:Paradjanov's pictorial influences weren't limited to Medieval Armenian miniatures and Russian icon painting
Yes, very true of course. I guess why I thought of Russian icons and Armenian miniatures in the first place was simply because of the stillness and transcendent character of his images. Matisse seems to have been a great influence, and also probably Chagall. Perhaps because of the more than unusual style of Paradjanov and probably also because of his Eastern origin one tends to perhaps over-rate those aspects of his work that for a Westerner would first of all be perceived as 'archaic', traditionalist etc. But I guess Paradjanov fits much more firmly into notions of 'modern/avantgarde' art-film than a composer like Arvo Pärt ( or any of those other former USSR composers now all released on ECM Records) would fit into concepts of European 'New Music'.
Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:I can only guess what Shadows and Pomengranates will do to me.
You ain't seen nothin' yet :-)

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MichaelB
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#107 Post by MichaelB » Fri Feb 08, 2008 7:36 pm

Tommaso wrote:You ain't seen nothin' yet :-)
Seconded - if the later films (which, believe it or not, are the conservative ones in Paradjanov's output) had that effect on you, prepare for your mind to be well and truly blown!
Last edited by MichaelB on Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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jsteffe
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#108 Post by jsteffe » Fri Feb 08, 2008 7:47 pm

Tommaso wrote:But I guess Paradjanov fits much more firmly into notions of 'modern/avantgarde' art-film than a composer like Arvo Pärt ( or any of those other former USSR composers now all released on ECM Records) would fit into concepts of European 'New Music'.
That's absolutely true. He wasn't the only Soviet director doing experimental work like that at that time--especially, see Yuri Ilyenko's A WELL FOR THE THIRSTY. But he pushed things farther than anyone else, and frankly his films are more beautiful, poetic, and emotionally profound than most of the other "poetic" filmmakers in the Soviet Union during that era.

It's interesting that you mention ECM. The score for THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES was composed by Tigran Mansurian, some of whose work is represented on that label. Actually, it's not a "score" per se, but really more that the entire film's soundtrack was an audio collage that Mansurian created. His use of magnetic tape splicing in some portions of the film is really daring, especially considering that it's a Soviet film. I'll go so far as to say that THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES has one of the most remarkable soundtracks ever for a feature film. As far as I know, Mansurian never made a soundtrack like it again.
Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:I can only guess what Shadows and Pomengranates will do to me.
It's probably not exaggerating to say you'll never look at cinema exactly the same way again.

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miless
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#109 Post by miless » Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:03 pm

It's been several years since I saw Pomegranates (and it was the Kino DVD, too!) but I still hold that it has the greatest compositions ever committed to academy ratio. I cannot get the images from the book depository sequence out of my head.

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jsteffe
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#110 Post by jsteffe » Sat Feb 09, 2008 5:24 pm

I've been watching the Ruscico/Kino DVD of SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS closely, and the subtitles are closer to the Ukrainian than the Home Vision/Janus Films videocassette available in the US up to now. Sometimes they're slightly out of sync with the dialogue, but probably not enough to be a major distraction.

On thing I should point out is that when Ivan is standing next to his father in church at the beginning of the film, he asks: "Is that the Vanisher (shcheznyk)?" "Evil spirit" is not exactly incorrect, but Ivan's referring to a specific kind of demon in Hutsul mythology.

Here's an English translationof Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky's original 1911 novella; it's a classic of Ukrainian literature.
Last edited by jsteffe on Sat Feb 09, 2008 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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HerrSchreck
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#111 Post by HerrSchreck » Sat Feb 09, 2008 5:47 pm

I would say in many cases (except those where like Tarks MIRROR where the subber turns away from the screen for long snoozes of dialog blackout) Kino's subbing-- translations themselves-- are their single strong point (aside from their overall taste in film, which, no secret, is much closer to my own vs CC) versus CC & Janus in general. CC tends to err on the side of safety in many cases when trying to get at the color or ballbusting in certain translations (Italian seems to be a problem here & there)... though they may be the first company to pioneer the efficiency of making sure that there are no blank spots of untranslated dialog (though not in the VHS/HVe days... Machden In Uniform being a glaring, screaming example). This was a "quality bullet point" for their DVDs, I'm thinking of I think Rublyov, where the back read "new improved subtitles. with 40% more dialog translated" or something.

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#112 Post by jsteffe » Sat Feb 09, 2008 6:54 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:I would say in many cases (except those where like Tarks MIRROR where the subber turns away from the screen for long snoozes of dialog blackout) Kino's subbing-- translations themselves-- are their single strong point (aside from their overall taste in film, which, no secret, is much closer to my own vs CC) versus CC & Janus in general. CC tends to err on the side of safety in many cases when trying to get at the color or ballbusting in certain translations (Italian seems to be a problem here & there)... though they may be the first company to pioneer the efficiency of making sure that there are no blank spots of untranslated dialog (though not in the VHS/HVe days... Machden In Uniform being a glaring, screaming example). This was a "quality bullet point" for their DVDs, I'm thinking of I think Rublyov, where the back read "new improved subtitles. with 40% more dialog translated" or something.
True, I've rarely had cause to complain about Kino's subtitling. But I'm pretty sure that in the case of SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS, they simply purchased the entire package from Ruscico and did very little, if any, tweaking themselves.

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HerrSchreck
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#113 Post by HerrSchreck » Sat Feb 09, 2008 7:40 pm

Not so sure on that-- many dvd editions which use the same telecine (digital videotape which, if the subs are optional, are not going to be on there) nonetheless require their own subbing. Also CC's with their own ports like Veronique or Pickpocket.

Even in the recent cases of the Kino Swedish silents they did their own subs unique from the Svensk Filmindustri package of the Stillers.

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MichaelB
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#114 Post by MichaelB » Sun Feb 10, 2008 4:11 am

HerrSchreck wrote:Not so sure on that-- many dvd editions which use the same telecine (digital videotape which, if the subs are optional, are not going to be on there) nonetheless require their own subbing. Also CC's with their own ports like Veronique or Pickpocket.
In the case of the Ruscico ports (or at least the ones I've seen on Artificial Eye and Nouveaux - I don't have any of the Kinos because I buy the PAL versions), it looks as though the distributor has received a lot more than just the telecine - they use the Ruscico menus too.

And since a subtitle translation already exists, and Ruscico's English subtitles are generally excellent, it seems pointless for Kino to begin a new one from scratch.

When I get a moment, I'll dig out my Nouveaux checkdiscs of Ballad of a Soldier and The Cranes Are Flying, as I have the Ruscico originals too - it should be the work of a moment to establish whether the subtitles are the same.

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tryavna
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#115 Post by tryavna » Sun Feb 10, 2008 12:51 pm

Well, Peerpee could probably address this issue more directly because I seem to remember that MoC tried to strike a deal with Ruscico at one point but couldn't come to an agreement. At any rate, my understanding was that up until a couple of years ago, when Ruscico made a deal with another distributor, one of the demands was that it be an exact port of the pre-existing Ruscico release -- audio remixes, subtitling, two-disc halving, et al. They seem to have lightened up somewhat -- perhaps starting with Nouveaux's release of Come and See. But that may still have some bearing on decisions regarding subtitles, etc.

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#116 Post by MichaelB » Sun Feb 10, 2008 3:06 pm

tryavna wrote:They seem to have lightened up somewhat -- perhaps starting with Nouveaux's release of Come and See. But that may still have some bearing on decisions regarding subtitles, etc.
The difference between the Nouveaux discs and the Ruscico originals is that the Nouveaux discs only offer two language options, namely:

1. Russian with forced English subs;
2. Dubbed English

The original Ruscico DVDs are far more linguistically versatile.

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Tommaso
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#117 Post by Tommaso » Wed Feb 20, 2008 6:14 pm

I have just watched the new Kino "Surami", and apart from being blown away by the film again (which I hadn't seen for quite a while), I must say that I'm quite satisfied with the quality. I didn't notice the macro-blocking incriminated by the Beaver, and though there's a lot of grain and the image is rather soft and unsharp in places (certainly due to the materials), it's a nice rendering without any overt PAL/NTSC artefacts. My greatest fear was the audio track of course (it indeed sounds rather tinny and sometimes distorted), but thankfully the bits of Russian voice over occur only in two scenes which are not among the most important, and I'm not even sure whether it's indeed four minutes all in all. So after all, I'm very happy with this disc until something better comes along...

One thing I had totally forgotten or never ever noticed: the credits name Dodo Abashidze alongside Paradjanov (who even only gets the second credit) as a director. Does anyone know what Abashidze's role was in directing this film? It looks completely like Paradjanov, but apparently this is some sort of collaborative effort, then?

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#118 Post by MichaelB » Wed Feb 20, 2008 6:21 pm

Tommaso wrote:One thing I had totally forgotten or never ever noticed: the credits name Dodo Abashidze alongside Paradjanov (who even only gets the second credit) as a director. Does anyone know what Abashidze's role was in directing this film? It looks completely like Paradjanov, but apparently this is some sort of collaborative effort, then?
He's credited as co-director of both Surami Fortress and Ashik Kerib, though I know very little about him (other than the bizarre coincidence that he and Paradjanov virtually shared birth and death dates).

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Tommaso
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#119 Post by Tommaso » Wed Feb 20, 2008 6:23 pm

Ah, thanks, I knew I had heard the name somewhere before.

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#120 Post by MichaelB » Wed Feb 20, 2008 6:40 pm

OK, I've done a bit of digging - apparently he was a popular and influential Georgian actor and close friend of Paradjanov, who agreed to take a co-director credit to act as a guarantee to the studio that Paradjanov wouldn't go completely mad - a bit like Wim Wenders understudying Antonioni or Beyond the Clouds or Paul Thomas Anderson with Altman on A Prairie Home Companion.

Certainly, I've never seen anyone claim that the films are anything other than Paradjanov creations, and I suspect Abashidze wouldn't either.

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#121 Post by videozor » Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:58 pm

Co-authoring was a common, and, mostly, ugly practice in Soviet cinema. Writers were forced by directors to credit them as co-authors; directors, in exchange, used their influence in pushing scripts for acceptance for production, etc.

The case of Paradzhanov and Abashidze is obviously different.

Dodo Abashidze was a very popular actor and, most likely, a nice person. He probably allowed Paradzhanov to use his name as the top-billed co-director to make the whole projects of Paradzhanov making movies again feasible.

Abashidse never directed anything before, between or after Paradszanov's last two feature films.

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miless
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#122 Post by miless » Fri Feb 22, 2008 2:37 am

anyone in the LA area should go to this. If LACMA added a Tarkovsky retrospective to that line-up I think I would have to move immediately.

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#123 Post by Adam » Fri Feb 22, 2008 3:28 pm

miless wrote:anyone in the LA area should go to this. If LACMA added a Tarkovsky retrospective to that line-up I think I would have to move immediately.
I'll be there tonight...

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jsteffe
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#124 Post by jsteffe » Sat Jul 12, 2008 3:37 pm

I finally sat down and looked at Kino's remastered DVD of The Legend of Suram Fortress, so here are my observations.

As discussed earlier, about 4 minutes of the original Georgian-language soundtrack had to be replaced by the Russian voiceover soundtrack due to the fire at the Georgian film archive a few years back. (Actually, Ruscico would have been able to recover the missing sountrack fragments elsewhere if they had looked hard enough, but that's another matter.) I was able to identify three main places where the substitution occurs--starting at approximately 9:18 (30 secondss), 56:55 (30 seconds) and 58:10 (3 minutes). Frankly, the impact on the film is pretty minimal. This is a great improvement compared to the older Ruscico edition, which only has the ruinous Russian voiceover translation.

Here's a frame from the new Kino edition:

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Here's a frame from the older Ruscico PAL edition.

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You could argue that the Kino loses a small bit of image quality in the PAL-NTSC conversion process, but really the difference is barely discernible when watching the actual DVD. It still looks very nice.

On the other hand, the difference between the old Kino NTSC edition and the new remastered edition is pretty dramatic:

Image
Image

Now here is where things get interesting. It is evident that the old Kino transfer, which they inherited from IFEX, as far as I know, was made from a theatrical print. On the whole it's quite a bit darker than the newer Ruscico-sourced transfer, but it also has a number of scenes that are clearly timed in printing as day-for-night shots. In the Ruscico-sourced transfer, they're significantly brighter. Here are a few examples:

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By the way, the difference is also visible on the old British Connoisseur/BFI PAL videocassette, which was taken from a different print from the old Kino DVD. (It's an unsubtitled print with electronic subtitles added afterwards.) Though not as extremely dark as the old Kino DVD, those exact same scenes were clearly timed as day-for-night shots.

Hmmm... Very, very interesting.

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HerrSchreck
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#125 Post by HerrSchreck » Sat Jul 12, 2008 3:47 pm

Darth Lavender wrote:As with all Ruscico ports, the NTSCs should ALWAYS be avoided becaused they're ultra-cheap, bootleg-quality conversions of the PAL dvds.
^
|
|
---------------- lol
jsteffe wrote:Here's a frame from the new Kino edition:

Image

Here's a frame from the older Ruscico PAL edition.

Image
jsteffe wrote:You could argue that the Kino loses a small bit of image quality in the PAL-NTSC conversion process, but really the difference is barely discernible when watching the actual DVD. It still looks very nice.

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