April's film from Armenian director Sergei Parajanov
is The Colour of Pomegranates (1969).
Doors open: 7.30pm
Don't miss it watch the trailer! Watch the trailer
is The Colour of Pomegranates (1969).
Doors open: 7.30pm
Film: 8pm
Tickets: free for members / £5 for everyone else.
Back at St. Paul's on Tuesday 2nd April.
WFC are very happy to be able to screen the restored version of the unique and stunning screen gem The Colour of Pomegranates (1969) from influential Armenian director Sergei Parajanov. Voted the 84th best film of all-time in the most recent Sight & Sound magazine greatest movies poll, and hailed as a 'cinematic holy grail', Martin Scorsese aptly said of The Colour of Pomegranates that it was “pretty much unlike anything in cinema history”.
A breathtaking fusion of poetry, ethnography, and cinema, Sergei Parajanov’s masterwork overflows with unforgettable images and sounds. In a series of tableaux that blend the tactile with the abstract, The Colour of Pomegranates revives the splendours of Armenian culture through the story of the eighteenth-century troubadour Sayat-Nova, charting his intellectual, artistic, and spiritual growth through iconographic compositions rather than traditional narrative. It deems to show and not tell - Pomegranates bleed their juice into the shape off a map of the old region of Armenia, the poet changes sex at least once in the course of his career, angels descend: the result is a stream of religious, poetic and local iconography which has an arcane and astonishing beauty, creating a unique cinematic language of its own.
Although much of its meaning must remain essentially specific to the culture from which the film springs, and no one could pretend that it's all readily accessible, it is utterly compelling in a way that's almost impossible to describe. It is a film to be felt and experienced rather than passively watched. As Scorsese said at the unveiling of the restored version 'I didn’t know any more about Sayat-Nova at the end of the picture than I knew at the beginning, but instead what Parajanov did was he opened a door into a timeless cinematic experience.'
The film’s tapestry of folklore and metaphor departed from the realism that dominated the Soviet cinema of its era, leading authorities to have the film re-editied by filmmaker Sergei Yutkevich in order to make the film easier to understand and more palatable to the authorities. Still distribution was blocked, with only rare underground screenings presenting it in its restructured form. In 2014 the film was digitally restored and re-edited to be as close as possible to the director’s original vision and world premiered at the 67th Cannes Film Festival, in a restoration that brings new life to one of cinema’s most breathtakingly beautiful and enigmatic meditations on art and beauty. We at WFC cannot wait to present this masterpiece to you in all its restored glory.
"The movie is one of a kind — an exotic pageant executed with grace, gravity and a breathtaking modesty of means." J Hoberman NYTimes
"I think you have to live at least 15 miles away and feel the need to walk there on foot to see [The Colour of Pomegranates]. If you feel that need and give it that faith, the film can give you everything you could wish." Jean-Luc Godard
The film is free to Worthing Film Club members (£30 a year - email Caroline at worthingfilmclub@gmail.com to join) or £5 for a ticket, cash on the door. For more details on membership, see here
