Sergei Parajanov. Visits / Sergei Paradzhanov. Vidvidyny

In November 1988, director Anatolii Syrykh met with Sergej Paradzhanov in Tbilisi to film a documentary portrait about him. However, Paradzhanov was not in the mood to talk about his art. As a compromise, Syrykh proposed discussing the artist and the era, to which Paradzhanov immediately responded that he had coughed up blood that morning.

The exhausted and world-weary director of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors forbade Syrykh from filming him. He agreed only to speak, recalling snippets of the most unpleasant moments of his life: persecution and accusations of homosexuality, harassment, and intimidation. Parallel to this, Syrykh shows footage from an exhibition dedicated to the director and scenes from Paradzhanov’s unfinished film Kyiv Frescoes. The film ends with Paradzhanov’s rather prophetic words that the State would only need him when he will be in a coffin. Two years later, Paradzhanov would pass away, and his figure would immediately enter the pantheon of the most important directors both in Ukraine and beyond.

The film about Sergej Paradzhanov became part of a series of documentary portraits of key artists of the 1960s, created by Anatolii Syrykh. He also made unique cinematic sketches about Hryhorii Havrylenko, Valentyn Sylvestrov, Gennadii Aigi, and Valerii Lamakh. In this way, Syrykh captured a snapshot of the era of the Sixties. At the same time, he created his own genre of “synthetic” documentary filmmaking, built on the interaction of music, literature, and visual material. The director edited and reinterpreted cinema chronicles and documentary material within a broader artistic concept, supplementing them with musical themes that referred to the context of the era. During Soviet times, Syrykh was criticized for “formalism” and “paradzhanyism,” which he allegedly leaned on in his films, but among filmmakers and the artistic circles, his works always received exceptionally positive reviews.