The Flower on the Stone / Golden Hands / Kyiv Frescoes
- This is a past program
Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series Three Homelands: A Sergei Parajanov Retrospective.
Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
The Flower on the Stone (1962)
A coal mining village built by the sheer sweat and muscle of the Ukrainian people arises in Donbass, bringing with it conflict between a charismatic Pentecostal priest, one of his most devout parishioners and a charismatic hooligan. Sergei Parajanov was brought on to complete the film after its initial director — Anatoli Slesarenko — was fired for endangering the life of leading lady Inna Burduchenko-Kiriliuk while shooting a scene involving a building on fire. The finished film boasts striking chiaroscuro compositions, silhouetted figures against the endless Donetsk steppe, that evoke the monumental cinematography of Mikhail Kalatozov. The film’s title refers to a flower fossilized in a rock, a fitting symbol for nature’s transformational perseverance.
DCP, b&w, in Russian with English subtitles, 73 min. Director: Sergei Parajanov. Screenwriter: Vadim Sobko. With: Boris Dmokhovsky, Grigori Karpov, Inna Burduchenko-Kiriliuk.
Golden Hands (1960)
Parajanov’s passion for all manner of folk art is fully explored in this vibrant short documentary, an impassioned homage to the wide variety of creative traditions from throughout Ukrainian. Works in ceramics, painting, glass and ornaments — a “lively variety of colors and forms” — are exhibited, with Parajanov being particularly attentive to the ways these rough-hewn works by serfs and peasants reflect scenes and figures of everyday life.
DCP, color, in Russian with English subtitles, 35 min. Directors: Alexander Nikolenko, Alexei Pankaratiev, Sergei Parajanov. Screenwriter: Ivan Kornienko. With: Boris Dmokhovsky, Grigori Karpov, Inna Burduchenko-Kiriliuk.
Kyiv Frescoes (1965)
After the artistic breakthrough of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Parajanov developed a follow-up honoring the 20th anniversary of World War II (or the Great Patriotic War as it was known in the USSR). Though a scenario and shooting were completed, the only footage that was shot are a few camera tests. Foreshadowing the stylistic pivot of 1969’s The Color of Pomegranates, Kyiv Frescoes is comprised of arcane tableaus decorated with enigmatic symbols — a flaming flatiron atop birch branches — and activated by the ritualized movements of impassive performers. “Only in ballet do we see pure beauty, pure pantomime,” Parajanov once said and the expressive gestural work of his actors in Kyiv Frescoes point the way to the baroquely choreographed performances that will appear in his subsequent films.
DCP, color, no dialogue, 13 min. Director: Sergei Parajanov. Screenwriters: Sergei Parajanov, Pavlo Zahrebelnyi. With: Tengiz Archadze, Via Artame, Afanasi Kochetkov.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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