edited by Garo Keheyan

Parajanov Himself is an absorbing portrait of Sergei Parajanov, one of the most colourful and revered figures in world cinema, and creator of the cult film The Colour of Pomegranates. With 85 colour reproductions of Parajanov’s compressed films, the book includes a candid interview with the artist. The selection focuses on the man himself, revealing a lesser-known aspect of his life and work. It includes transcriptions of interviews with notes that help to unravel the artist’s imaginative and often idiosyncratic mixed language vocabulary.

Despite praise and numerous awards from the international filmmaking community, Parajanov was imprisoned by the communist regime. Directing was for him fundamentally the truth, as he perceived it, transformed into images and he believed that directors are born, not trained. During his long periods of imprisonment in Soviet jails, Parajanov’s artistic energies and originality could not be hindered. He created some 800 small-scale collages from drawings, cut-up photographs and found materials he would collect in prison. Parajanov Himself is an in-depth look at of one of the most extraordinary artistic figures of the 20th Century.