suram

The Films of Sergei Paradjanov (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors/The Color of Pomegranates/The Legend of Suram Fortress/Ashik Kerib)
$79.95
A visual and aural treat like nothing else in cinema. Not so much four films about pre-Industrial Age folk culture as four films by someone who is part of that culture: as if an early 19th-century peasant of the Caucasus somehow got hold of a movie camera and a master class in avant-garde cinema (Vertov to Brakhage), started filming, and turned out to be a genius.

All four films are as of this writing available separately at this site, and I've reviewed them individually on their pages. I've given each a sincere five stars.

With the exception of The Color of Pomegranates, the films are all well presented on DVD. Pomegranates is, bought separately, the most expensive of the bunch, possibly because it's an acknowledged classic - The BFI placed it at number ten on its list of all-time greatest films - but all titles are exceptional creations, and buying them in the boxed format represents a bargain.

Paradjanov once defined these four films as his mature work, when he arrived at the 'people's themes' of 'ethnography, God, love and tragedy.' (He dismissed the eight films he made before this as 'garbage.') The 'ethnography' tag is an unfortunate choice of words; these four films are all drawn from the folk culture of the Caucasus, but filtered through Paradjanov's highly individual style, formed out of experimental cinema and several currents of modern art.

So it's not so much that a filmmaker is portraying a series of cultures as that Paradjanov has become the artist of those cultures, and, like any great artist, by being part of a culture ('forging the uncreated conscience of his race', as Joyce's Stephen Dedalus puts it) has redefined it.

Or, as Paradjanov puts it: 'This is the truth I've created.'

Fortress of Suram
$0.89

The Legend of Suram Fortress (Special Edition) (1984) (Sub)
$29.95
Another feast for the eyes and stun to the senses from Paradjanov, in this retelling of a Georgian folk tale about a crumbling fortress and human sacrifice. Complete with colourful costumes, surprising images and a beautiful soundtrack of regional music.

After the scandal of The Color of Pomegranates, it was 15 years before the Soviet authorities allowed Paradjanov to work again. From 1973 he served over four years in prison, where he later said he avoided going mad by creating sketches on any old scrap of paper, dolls made from rags, and collages from all sorts of junk, often including dolls' heads. (His artwork is now in an eponymous museum in Armenia, and fake Paradjanovs do five-to-six-figure business in the auction houses of Europe.)

So it's no surprise that Paradjanov's telling of the Legend of the Suram Fortress is more a collage than anything else (it's definitely not a straight-ahead narrative), in which connections are made as they are in surrealist art and in dreams, by contiguity rather than through everyday A, then B, then C logic.

(It's not a straight-ahead narrative, but there is a story: Paradjanov was persecuted in part because he was an outspoken regional nationalist. The young man who must sacrifice himself to save the fortress that protects his people and their way of life might be the director.)

The atmosphere of fable is heightened by toy-like props: a cartoonish galleon at the seaside (Paradjanov cranks up the toyishness by letting you see real oil tankers in the far background), and a fabric tiger as a stand-in for the real thing. It may have been Paradjanov's way of showing the authorities that do what they would - throw him in prison, cut his film budget to nothing - they couldn't crush his creative spirit.

The dvd comes with a number of extras, including a revealing interview with Paradjanov's wife, who discusses his personality and the circumstances of his imprisonment.

Suram Fortress is also available as part of the four-film set The Films of Sergei Paradjanov (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors/The Color of Pomegranates/The Legend of Suram Fortress/Ashik Kerib). Well worth having.

DE LA PAMPA Y SURAM
$24.98