Sayat Nova Outtakes: Using Archival Film Elements to Re-evaluate Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates (1969)

Title: Sayat Nova Outtakes: Using Archival Film Elements to Reevaluate Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates (1969)

Abstract

Rarely during film production in the Soviet era was it customary to preserve outtakes, let alone screen and camera tests. An exception, however, is the case of Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates. Shot across Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, with additional studio work in Ukraine, it was reedited by Sergei Yutkevich at the order of Goskino, the USSR State Committee for Cinema. After being assigned third category distribution, it was eventually shelved when its director was tried in camera and sentenced to the Dnipropetrovsk labour camp. Closer to Parajanov’s original intentions, Parajanov’s Armenian version re-emerged after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, scenes shot by Parajanov not present in this cut were but rumours until the discovery of approximately one hundred film cans containing fragments of 35mm original camera negatives in Armenfilm, Yerevan. Since 2018, a project based in Warsaw in association with the various Armenian state film agencies has been underway to both scan and catalogue these unique raw film materials. By cross-referencing archival documents held in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) relating to the film’s troubled production history, these materials provide a remarkable insight into Parajanov’s creative process and Soviet film production both in Armenia and beyond. This talk both presents an outline of this project and discusses the implications of these materials.

Bio

Daniel Bird is a writer, curator and filmmaker. He studied psychology and philosophy (BSc) at Keele University and philosophy (MA) at Warwick University. He received a Polish government post-graduate research scholarship to study at the Institute of Culture, Warsaw University. After several years working with the Polish director Andrzej Żuławski, he co-founded Friends of Walerian Borowczyk, a non-profit association based in Paris. Since 2018 he has led a preservation and restoration project concerning films from the South Caucasus, Central Asia and Ukraine. His installation, Temple of Cinema #1: Sayat Nova Outtakes, opened the 2019 edition of the Art Directions programme at International Film Festival Rotterdam, and has subsequently been presented in the foyer of Kino Rossiya in Yerevan, House of World Cultures in Berlin, UNESCO headquarters in Paris, the 2024 Sydney Biennale, Fabrica gallery in Brighton, and the Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin. As a curator, he has programmed retrospectives at Lincoln Center (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), and Il Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna). He regularly collaborates with the World Cinema Project at Cineteca di Bologna, most recently on restorations of Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and Ardak Amirkulov’s The Fall of Otrar. He has guest lectured on the Lens Based Media MA at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam as well as the Presentation and Preservation of the Moving Image MA at the University of Amsterdam. He is the recipient of the 2015 Focal International Prize for Best Film Preservation and Restoration Project (Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection). He is also a regular contributor to The Criterion Collection and his writings have appeared in MUBI Notebook and The Guardian.

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