The Hammer is a 4-Day Vote Center, Nov 2–5. See hours

The Color of Pomegranates

  • This is a past program

In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, we dedicate 2015 to an exploration of multiple facets of Armenian culture, history, and landscape through film in our series I Am Armenian. Learn more about I Am Armenian.

Restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, this masterpiece is a can’t-miss for students of film. Its director graduated from the Soviet Russian All-Union State Institute of Cinema in Moscow in 1951 but was jailed soon after the film’s original release, courtesy of Soviet authorities. A chronicle of the life of Sayat Nova, the revered Armenian troubadour, it is no standard biopic but instead a cinematic poem. (1969, Dir. Sergei Parajanov, 77 min.)

A Q&A with filmmaker Dr. Carla Garapedian of the Armenian Film Foundation and Dr. James Steffen follows the screening. 

A book signing with Dr. Steffen and complimentary coffee, tea, and Armenian pastries will follow the program.

James Steffen is the Film and Media Studies Librarian for Emory University’s Woodruff Library. A film historian by training, he earned a doctorate at the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts in 2005. His dissertation was on the filmmaker Sergei Parajanov and the politics of nationality and aesthetics in the Soviet Union. Dr. Steffen has done archival research and interviews in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia, and his research languages include Russian, Ukrainian, French, and Georgian.

All Hammer public programs are free and made possible by a major gift from the Dream Fund at UCLA. 

Generous support is also provided by Susan Bay Nimoy and Leonard Nimoy, Good Works Foundation and Laura Donnelley, an anonymous donor, and all Hammer members. 

The Hammer’s digital presentation of its public programs is made possible by the Billy and Audrey L. Wilder Foundation.