Mirror and Pomegranate
(2013) is the combined works of two geniuses in cinematography.
‘Mirror’ is Andrey
Tarkovsky, Russian filmmaker of Mirror (1974)
and seven other feature films. In this book his son has collected a series of
Polaroid photographs that his father took in Russia and Italy from 1979 to
1984. Andrey Arsenievich Tarkovsky (1932-1986) started his film career in
Russia, and in the early 1980s he left his homeland permanently after a heart
attack in 1978. He resumed filmmaking in Italy. He died at the age of 54 of
cancer and is buried in the Russian cemetery Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois near
Paris.
Tarkovsky’s Polaroids
are from his private collection, depicting his family, home, and landscapes.
They are early colour photos in which the colours are distorted or faded,
giving the photographs a surreal sense of perspective and even an eeriness
about them. Nevertheless, most of them are spellbinding for the way in which
his artistic eye perceives the subjects, especially the landscapes, urban
streets, and portraits.
‘Pomegranate’ is Sergei
Parajanov, Georgian filmmaker of The
Colour of Pomegranates (1968) and 13 other films. Sargis Parajanyants
(1924-1990) was born in Tbilisi and studied cinematography in Moscow, Russia.
He worked in Ukraine where he was imprisoned for five years ‘on fabricated
charges.’ He was also banned from making films for 15 years. In those years he started
to create collages, each of which he said were ‘a compressed film.’ Afterwards he
continued making films in Georgia, and died in Yerevan, Armenia.
Parajanov’s collages,
from 1973 to 1989, are from his collection at the Parajanov Museum in Yerevan,
founded in 1988. The collages are a combination of simple and complex images,
which he cuts and pastes together to form a story – mostly evocative, comical
or intricately complicated – especially when he had a message to portray. He
was often said to compose the collages spontaneously, whenever he got an idea,
and therefore they are expressive of his immediate feelings. And not just
collages, but also collections of dolls, hats, drawings, and patterns. For the
most complex collages there is a lot to visualize, enabling viewers not only to
imagine Parajaov’s ‘story’ but also to conjure up a dozen interpretations of
their own.
Apart from the
fascinating photographs and collages in this book, the story of the friendship
of the two filmmakers is interesting and remarkable. They were both married,
and met each other in the early 1970s in Ukraine before Parajanov was imprisoned.
They regarded each other as creative geniuses. Tarkovsky wrote letters to
Parajanov while he was in prison, and Parajanov sent Tarkovsky the collages he
made in prison. Hence there was always a dialogue between them about the
creative process, whether it related to cinematography or other art forms.
Four of Tarkovsky’s
letters are included in the book, showing great admiration for Parajanov, offering
his support and love, while communicating the need to maintain courage.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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