Sergei Paradjanov: Retrospective for a Visionary

Soviet-era film director Sergei Paradjanov is a figure whose complicated biography has often overshadowed his innovative and distinctive cinematic style. The first full UK retrospective of his work at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank, marking the 20th anniversary of the director’s death, gives a chance to reassess the paradoxes of his heritage, and delight in a character whose rebellious passion for life and for artistic beauty brought him through some of the worst trials that the Soviet system could impose on an artist. Meanwhile, an exhibition of photographs by his long-term collaborator Yury Mechitov catches the last decade or so of Paradjanov’s life in his native city of Tbilisi, and shows the richly human face of so complex a personality.

Soviet-era film director Sergei Paradjanov is a figure whose complicated biography has often overshadowed his innovative and distinctive cinematic style. The first full UK retrospective of his work at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank, marking the 20th anniversary of the director’s death, gives a chance to reassess the paradoxes of his heritage, and delight in a character whose rebellious passion for life and for artistic beauty brought him through some of the worst trials that the Soviet system could impose on an artist. Meanwhile, an exhibition of photographs by his long-term collaborator Yury Mechitov catches the last decade or so of Paradjanov’s life in his native city of Tbilisi, and shows the richly human face of so complex a personality.