“My revenge to the world will be love”

The world, and in particular the Soviet part of it, did not treat Parajanov fairly. The world that Parajanov created and that was available to us through his movies, collages, and texts challenged the boundaries of the official Soviet culture. This made him join the ranks of the biggest names of dissident culture and the Soviet authorities couldn’t forgive the artist for this and subjected him to persecution and jail terms. Parajanaov countered these policies of prohibitions, repressions, and restrictions with his love.

Parajanov’s world and his huge love towards this world not only challenged the boundaries of the official culture of his times, but it also challenged the boundaries of national cultures, allowing him easily and masterfully cross into the space of the Georgian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Azerbaijani, Russian and other national cultures.

Maintaining the ideas of inter-ethnic co-existence, the commonness of routine culture for different people, and polylingualism, natural for his Tbilisi childhood, Parajanov managed to simultaneously be at the center of the most diverse cultural paradigms, genres, styles and transfer his multiple identities, his love towards the world and art into his own art that did not recognise any boundaries.

One of the experts in this short documentary calls Parajanov an “interpreter” – an interpreter of different national cultures. It seems that in the process of this endless interpretation Sergo tried to tell his audience how different societies that are often in a state of conflict or sometimes even completely avoid and ignore each other are in reality very similar.

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