Parajanov: The Last Spring

Filmed in wartime and edited under candlelight, Mikhail Vartanov's rarely-seen masterwork tells of his friendship with the genius Sergei Parajanov who was arrested by KGB, at the height of his fame, for the outspoken criticism of the Soviet regime. Vartanov resurrects the riveting scenes from his banned 1969 film, The Color of Armenian Land, where Paradjanov concocts the chef-d'oeuvre Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates) - widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time - then reveals a shocking secret request Parajanov sent him in an unpublished 1974 letter from the Ukrainian prisons. Vartanov's camera documents Parajanov's staggering last day at work in 1990 during the making of the unfinished Confession - the original camera negative of which survives in Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992) - as Parajanov comments on this cherished autobiographical film. The foremost achievement of The Last Spring, emphasized by the American and European critics, is Vartanov's exquisite wordless montage that "evoked the very soul" of Parajanov and earned the praise of many of cinema's greatest masters, such as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.