Cinema lovers will certainly know the unique work of Soviet Armenian film director Sergei Parajanov.
Censored, banned and arrested in his country, Parajanov was instead revered by the international community of directors – comprising Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky and Pier Paolo Pasolini – for the visual quality and power of his films.
One of Parajanov’s most famous films, universally considered as a masterpiece, is Sayat Nova, shot in 1968.
Banned by the Soviet censors, the film was re-edited by Parajanov and renamed The Color of Pomegranates.
The film is an unconventional biography of Armenian gusan (a word used to describe a folk singer-songwriter and poet) Haroutiun Sayakian, better known as Sayat Nova or “King of Songs”, born in 1712 in the village of Sanahin.
Sayat Nova’s life is indeed told through Parajanov’s imagination and visions as a long series of tableaux, from the poet’s childhood spent working as apprentice to a weaver, to his role as royal musician and poet at the court of Heracle II, his life as a monk and his death.
The film became famous for Parajanov’s use of vividly bright colours, symbolisms, religious iconography and elaborate Armenian costumes and accessories (created in collaboration with Georgian painter, graphic artist, costume designer and theatre set decorator Elena Akhvlediani), employed as the main elements to tell a visually powerful story.
The tableaux that form the narration are almost woven one after the other, forming a cinematic tapestry and evoking the art of weaving, and important trade in the Armenian peasant community.
Fashion is something definitely less hieratical compared to a film such as The Colour of Pomegranates, but it was interesting to see how Brazilian designer Alexandre Herchcovitch tried to inject into his usually urban and sporty designs a little bit of Parajanov’s art.
Moving from the director's work, Herchcovitch embellished his dresses with chains, studs, appliquéd motifs and embroideries that called to mind folk costumes; created contrasts by matching casual red and black plaid tops and jackets with heavily embellished trousers; overloaded silk printed shirts with cascades of scale-like sequins; reinvented crocheting by decorating it with rubber details and crystals and adding a few frayed hems and completed the looks with elaborate headdresses adorned with thick wood chains.
It was maybe a 'punk meets Yves Saint Laurent's 1976-77 'Ballets Russes' collection meets The Colour of Pomegranate' collection, but it worked rather well and it showed that Herchcovitch has grown up and become able to mix urban and casual with more stylish, opulent and elegantly cinematic inspirations.
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