In Moscow, for the 31st time, an international book exhibition and fair was held in the 75th pavilion of VDNH. The grand opening took place on September 5th, and marked the beginning of a new book season. The most striking, in our opinion, was the presentation of the book “Treasures by Mount Ararat”, which is a collection of scripts by the great film director Sergei Parajanov.
Book presentation
The scenario collection is a guide to the creative path of the maestro. The presentation was created by the hosts of this meeting, the chief curator of the Museum of Sergey Parajanov, Vigen Barkhudaryan, as well as a psychologist, art critic, expert on the work of the director - Veronik Zhuravlev.
From them we learned a lot from the life of the great director. Work on the book began in 2015. According to the art historian, from the time the first screenwriting collection was published (it was 2001), until 2015, when V. Zhuravleva began working on the collection, other scripts entered the museums, which were only partially published as part of journal articles. The book bit by bit contains a variety of historical documents that help us see the full picture of the artist’s worldview. According to Veronika Zhuravleva, Sergey Iosifovich Parajanov is a man of world-wide culture. It belongs to the whole world and not without reason during his lifetime he received the title of maestro.
When creating the collection, the authors took into account the peculiarities of the creative path of the talented director, placed author's collages, drawings, various illustrations on the pages. They are located in the text, “so that the reader, when he picks up the script, has a complete picture. That is, a person saw not only the text, but also those visual images that Sergey Parajanov created, ”Veronika explained.
Funds for the book were collected, as they say, by the whole world - the authors were helped by admirers of the director’s creativity, his fans on the Planeta website. ru, and as a result, it was possible to collect even a larger amount than originally expected.
Scripting Brief
Sergei Parajanov shot his first film, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964), in Ukraine, based on a literary work that is a legacy of Ukrainian literature, namely, the story of the same name by M. M. Kotsyubinsky. The authors of the collection took great pleasure in compiling it, since there is material related to Ukrainian culture, Georgian culture, Armenian culture, and the culture of Tiflis Armenians. In particular, this is the autobiographical script “Confession”, which was compiled by the director from the sixty-ninth year to the end of his days. In the eighty-ninth year, filming began. They lasted only two days, after which Sergey Iosifovich felt very ill and could no longer finish work on this motion picture. Parajanov’s latest film, Ashik-Kerib, was released thirty years ago, but so far the work of the great director continues to attract his admirers.
The second scenario of the book is the well-known film Sayat-Nova. In wide hire she entered under the name "Color of pomegranate" (1968). Work on the script began in the sixty-sixth year. It is known that after The Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Sergei Parajanov received an invitation from the Armenian SSR in order to create a work of art based on Armenian culture. And they became material that tells about the fate of the medieval poet Sayat-Nova. Sergey Parajanov has begun work on this film; he himself created the script, costume designs. These costumes are included in the book “Treasures by Mount Ararat”. They are exhibited at the Museum of Sergei Parajanov in Yerevan. And it was very hard work, because Sergey Iosifovich thought in images. If you take the book in your hands, you can see the storyboards of the film "Sayat-Nova." Moreover, the authors tried to select exactly those storyboards that went into the picture. This is a great success, because the film was completed in the sixty-eighth year, after which a big artistic council was held - first at the “Armenfilm” film studio, where the film was banned from showing. He needed to somehow release this film, because it was a colossal job. If you look at the “Color of the Pomegranate”, then all that you can see there - various decorations, church items - these are all real art objects, they were going to museums in Armenia. According to Veronika Zhuravleva, Sergey Iosifovich could not stand props. In the film "Sayat Nova" there is such a shot, when the poet Sayat Nova dies, then he lies on the floor and there are many candles around him. These candles were specially ordered at the factory, they could not be bought at the store. Parajanov did this so that in the frame everything was exactly as it should. The premiere took place in the 69th year in the cinema "Moscow".
Prison script
We are talking about the scenario "Swan Lake. Zone ”, about which Veronika Zhuravleva spoke in more detail. When Sergey Iosifovich was serving his second prison sentence, he wrote in letters to his friends and colleagues that he would certainly try to realize the scripts that he had time to write while in the zone. Unfortunately, when he left, in '89, he was already a deeply sick person, his undermined physical health no longer allowed him to create. As a result, Sergey Iosifovich recorded the text of the script on a dictaphone, and the film was released in the 1990s, now it is in the public domain.
The authors of the collection wanted to restore historical justice, since Parajanov was undeservedly accused of the fact that he did not work anywhere and did nothing, but in fact he created many different scenarios, they were simply not allowed to be rented, it was impossible to shoot them without permission . In the collection “Treasures by Mount Ararat”, Vigen Barkhudaryan and Veronika Zhuravleva created a special Black Page, associated with the years of imprisonment, where one of the artist’s letters and his self-portrait were placed.
Interesting Facts
It was curious to know that one of the roles in the film that was never made under the script “Demon” was to be performed by Maya Plisetskaya, that the muse and savior of the maestro was the magnificent Sofiko Chiaureli (in the film “Color of the Pomegranate” she brilliantly played five roles at once!). It was thanks to her intervention that Sergei Iosifovich was in one of his prison sentences for only nine months.
Some scenarios were not included in the collection, as they were not written by Sergei Parajanov (for example, this is the film "Legend of the Suram Fortress", which was written by Vazha Gigashvili). At the same time, the director’s work is characterized by religious themes, which can be seen in his films “Kiev Murals”, “Treasures by Mount Ararat”. The technical feature of the films of Sergey Parajanov is the frame statics.
The work of the great master is really capable of influencing the worldview of each individual person, and is able to change fate. It is not for nothing that Veronika Zhuravleva changed the topic of her candidate dissertation, having decided to devote herself to studying the work of Parajanov? And, according to Slava Stepanyan, a friend of Sergei Iosifovich, it’s already impossible to read any other scripts after reading Parajanov’s works. The maestro himself warned about this, and this turned out to be true.
And therefore, the release of the second edition of the book seems to be so exciting, which, we hope, will contain even more interesting materials and will reveal to us the secret of the director’s work.
