Kino: The Films of Sergei Paradjanov

[unclehulot]

The discussion of the upcoming Paradjanov films reminds me of one of my favorites not on DVD (subtitled, at least), a film loosely based on Gogol, directed by Paradjanov's cinematographer, Yuri Ilyenko, The Eve of Ivan Kupalo (Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala) which was made in 1968, but shelved by Soviet censors, and only released in 1988 (briefly!).

Does anyone know this film? I saw a theatrical showing during that 1988 release, and it reminded me very much of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and seemed nearly as spellbinding to me at the time I saw it. Apparently there's a Russian DVD release, but it's unsubtitled. Sure wish Kino, or Ruscico, or somebody would release it!

[Cold Bishop]

Intriguing... It also appears that he adapted one of Paradjanov's unfilmed scripts in 1990, entitled in English as Swan Lake: The Zone (which brings a very odd mental image of a bizarre cross between Tchaikovsky and Tarkovsky) and the very little comments I find on IMDB for his various films sound very promising. Second Run should look into this guy.

[miless]

I saw this film recently that really reminded me of paradjanov, except that it had to do with ancient new world mythology. it was called Erendira ikikunari and it was an ancient fable centered around ancient Mexican culture (and the conquistadors). It was even shot sort of like Legend of Suram Fortress. Good luck finding it, however ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445960/ ).

[jsteffe]

The discussion of the upcoming Paradjanov films reminds me of one of my favorites not on DVD (subtitled, at least), a film loosely based on Gogol, directed by Paradjanov's cinematographer, Yuri Ilyenko, The Eve of Ivan Kupalo (Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala) which was made in 1968, but shelved by Soviet censors, and only released in 1988 (briefly!).

Does anyone know this film? I saw a theatrical showing during that 1988 release, and it reminded me very much of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and seemed nearly as spellbinding to me at the time I saw it. Apparently there's a Russian DVD release, but it's unsubtitled. Sure wish Kino, or Ruscico, or somebody would release it!

Intriguing... It also appears that he adapted one of Paradjanov's unfilmed scripts in 1990, entitled in English as Swan Lake: The Zone (which brings a very odd mental image of a bizarre cross between Tchaikovsky and Tarkovsky) and the very little comments I find on IMDB for his various films sound very promising. Second Run should look into this guy.

Ilyenko is a decidedly mixed director, in my humble opinion. I do like his first few major films, such as the long-banned A Well for the Thirsty (1965), The Eve of Ivan Kupala/John the Baptist's Eve (1968) and his most popular work, White Bird With a Black Mark (1971). The first film is amazing, a real work of poetry in its own right, but all his subsequent films that I've seen are hampered to varying degrees by chasing after striking effects for their own sake. His camera tricks eventually feel imposed upon the material, and he lacks the underlying warmth, the love of people that gives emotional resonance to Paradjanov's work. In other words, Ilyenko's later films simply lack soul. But I do think those first three films are really worth putting on video someday

Apart from the beginning, with the escaped convict hiding in a giant hammer and sickle sculpture, I found Swan Lake: the Zone to be heavy going and as far from the spirit of Paradjanov as one can imagine. And as for his latest, A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa, all I can say is that near-constant use of extreme wide-angle, handheld camerawork does not necessarily make for a good film.

[Cold Bishop]

Three good ones are more than enough.

[HerrSchreck]

In terms of the camera movement and budget of Pomegranites-- well yea of course SP (no Tom Cruise, not that kind) meant to shoot the bulk of the film in tableaux style. But I daresay that, compared to his preceding works, the style and extreme obscurity (and religious nuance) of the films content and style-- in the Soviet Union-- fed into the budget & technical situation. Paradjanov speaks very openly about the fact that the film was made under extremely difficult technical circumstances-- had shit film, he had no lab processing in Moscow, he had no lighting equipment, no opticals, nothing. He had a camera, some cruddy film he did NOT want to work with, no lighting, no technical equipment (his term(, no special effects (his term, but since we know he didnt mean cgi he probably meant cranes dollies opticals etc), he had a talented cinematographer, his imagination, and an incredible concept.

This is what makes this film (which in most other peoples hands would have been a mere home movie) one of the most astounding and original masterpieces ever made. WOuld he have moved the camera if he had the money to? It's a good question. In the places and open terrain he was shooting, finding perfectly flat floors agreeable to use makeshift dollies (wheelchairs, wagons, cars, etc) would have been near impossiibe. That's dolly country.. I suspect a bumpy jittering camera would have been the norm in those old medieval/ancient kurdish/armenian locations with brick and dirt floors and unpaved roads.

Kino's original disc of Kerib contains a transfer that is an abomination. That was absolutely an abomination and I'm totally in agreement with that. It's obviously not digital, is rife with chroma, analogue haloing like crazy, and the colors are detroyed.

I have little doubt that the material on the Kino Pomegranites is a reasonably accurate representation of what the film looked like at the time of it's release. It's a digital transfer, and it leans heavily towards red and probably for a reason (an obvious one... title?). We have to be careful about looking at production stills (which I havent seen) when trying to determine what the film/stock looked like. He may have had access to good Kodak etc color film for his stills, and may have had responses in termperature and tone and contrast entirely different than whatever was in that camera.

The colors are definitely muted otherwise, but I think the unresponsivity of the soviet shittiest color filmstock (probably stale too) is to blame, not the transfer. It looks a lot like older copies of other Soviet films where directors complained about the stinkass quality of the color stock they were handed.

I've never gone for these other transfers of Pomegranates because this is a film whose color correction simply cannot be taken up by any telecine colorist out of the blue. I daresay without the help of the cinematographer, or someone who was around SP during post, it's damn near impossible. Simple color correction-to-palette norms will produce a product pleasing to most dvd-o-philes, in that it will look a lot more like what they've grown accustomed to, but in the case of this very unique film made under very unusual circumstyances by a most unusual man (with one of the most unusual visual sensibilities ever, period), attempting to discern what he was aiming for, and attempting to reporduce the final outcome of his attempt to cope with the technical limitations at hand with this most uincompromising film (the reason for it's low budget), is quite difficult.

For now I'll stick with What Was Onscreen Back Then when it came out. I think it's telling that by-comparison less-significant/revered films like Surami and Kerib are being revamped with new transfers, whereas those other transfers for POmegranites mentioned here are being ignored for this set. A modern LeeKlinesque digital tweaking of POmegranites would be quite a challenging project, and one I wouldnt want to be stuck with the headache of. The final outcome of his attempt to 1) reproduce the byzantine world of art, and 2) how that attempt was mangled by the film stock and technical limitations at hand, plus 3) how SP responded to those limitations with offsets in and out of the camera and in Post... can only be discerned in vintage pristine prints.

Is the cinematographer still alive btw?

[vogler]

Schreck, I reckon you should give the Japanese DVD a go if you get the chance. There's a custom subbed dvd-r version of it out there if you know where to find it. The colours are not all that radically different but are a bit more vibrant. The biggest improvement is in the sharpness of the image. I tend to only watch this DVD of Pomegranates now. It is slightly annoying that it's the edited version but the differences between the two versions are not all that huge (There is also a divx version of the Japanese DVD available that has restored the voiceover reciting from the Book of Genesis at the beginning of the film). It is interesting from a historical perspective to note the differences between the two cuts though.

Perhaps Kino didn't use the Japanese transfer because 1. it's the shorter edit and their version is the longer cut, 2. financial reasons or 3. they didn't even know it existed. They probably wouldn't have considered it worth upgrading to the Films Sans Frontieres version since the differences are not all that huge anyway. It's slightly sharper and not window boxed but doesn't offer anything like the improvement that the shorter edit on the Japanese DVD does. It's definitely a shame Kino didn't include the better quality shorter edit as well. The box set might then have been definitive, assuming the other transfers are decent.

With regards to seeing "What Was Onscreen Back Then when it came out" I don't personally have any evidence to confirm that the Kino is closer than the Japanese DVD. You probably know more about the origin of the Kino print than I do though (considering I have no idea where it came from or even if it's 16mm or 35). Also I would have no way to tell how much this print has faded over time, and if it is a 16mm print, how much was lost when it was transferered from 35 to 16, and whether the 16mm print was made from the negative or a positive print. And I don't really have any way to know that the prints that were originally shown were exactly as Paradjanov had intended (considering the difficult lab processing situation that you mentioned) or if he was even particularly sensitive to small differences in the colours of prints.

So I'm just going with the version of the film that I find to be the most pleasing to watch and that is definitely the Japanese DVD. This DVD also suggests that perhaps the original raw film stock used to shoot the film wasn't all that bad. The original negative is/was probably fairly good.

A few captures from the Japanese DVD.














I got a bit carried away taking those screen captures. No matter where you pause the film you have a total masterpiece.

[jsteffe]

For now I'll stick with What Was Onscreen Back Then when it came out. I think it's telling that by-comparison less-significant/revered films like Surami and Kerib are being revamped with new transfers, whereas those other transfers for POmegranites mentioned here are being ignored for this set. A modern LeeKlinesque digital tweaking of POmegranites would be quite a challenging project, and one I wouldnt want to be stuck with the headache of. The final outcome of his attempt to 1) reproduce the byzantine world of art, and 2) how that attempt was mangled by the film stock and technical limitations at hand, plus 3) how SP responded to those limitations with offsets in and out of the camera and in Post... can only be discerned in vintage pristine prints.

Is the cinematographer still alive btw?

For me, the point is that the transfer which Kino re-used never was the best that the Armenian release version could look on video. I've seen a 35mm print of the Armenian release version, which was hardly ideal but certainly had more vidid color. The Kino transfer looks terribly dark in places. The transfer on the FsF disc is newer and probably would have looked better if someone hadn't boosted the color and contrast too much--this is just my guess.

The surviving materials for the Armenian release version are at least a generation or two removed from the camera negative, and it appears that the materials were printed on to lower-than-average quality stock, even by Soviet standards, so at least in terms of color and detail this version will probably always be somewhat compromised.

I should also add that the Armenian release verision is not in any way a "director's cut." Based on my study of the censorship files held in Moscow, this version was the result of a protracted battle and extensive compromises between Paradjanov and the authorities in both Armenia and Moscow. The Armenian authorities (inc. the Central Committee) forced Paradjanov to remove all references to Sayat-Nova from the film, from the title to the chapter headings. Paradjanov always wanted his film to be "about" Sayat-Nova, even though it was a very free treatment of the poet's life. Paradjanov also didn't write the title cards for the Armenian version--they were written by a noted writer named Hrant Matevosian, though from what I"m told they sound very poetic in the Armenian.

Moscow didn't like the film because they wanted something to educate the masses on Sayat-Nova as a great "poet of the people," and initially they didn't want to release it at all. However, the Armenian officials pushed back and got approval to release the film within Armenia only. That's where the Armenian theatrical release version--the so-called "director's cut"--fits in.

The Armenians brought in Sergei Yutkevich, who had been a reader of the original script for the censorship board in Moscow and who actually liked Paradjanov's work, to make some changes in the film so that it could get a general release in the Soviet Union. Although some of his changes are pointless, he was familiar with the original script and even re-introduced some quotations from Sayat-Nova's poetry in the title cards, whereas they had been entirely removed from the title cards in the Armenian version.

The Yutkevich version, which used the camera negative or something closer to it, much better represents how Paradjanov wanted the film to look, but not how he wanted it put together. Since color and visual texture in general are so important to Paradjanov's vision for this film, I still wouldn't discount the value of having the Yutkevich cut available and using it for study. If you really want to appreciate what Paradjanov was doing, I would argue that you have to see both versions of the film.

I don't have my notes handy, but I believe Suren Shahbazian died in the early 80s. Paradjanov considered him is closest friend and even named his son (Suren) after him.

[jsteffe]

Thanks for the screen caps, Vogler. For those who are interested, the Japanese DVD is still in print, and it's available from Amazon.jp or from YesAsia.

[Tommaso]

The Kino transfer looks terribly dark in places. The transfer on the FsF disc is newer and probably would have looked better if someone hadn't boosted the color and contrast too much--this is just my guess.

I'm not so sure that the FsF is very much boosted. As Schreck pointed out, it's very difficult to be sure of the colour palette of "Pomegranates". In my view, the FsF's vibrancy nicely transports the painterly and somewhat psychedelic qualities of the film. The great improvement over the Kino for me are the subtitles, removable and nicely done in an inobtrusive manner in white in contrast to the unremovable big yellow ones of the Kino. My reason for chiming in with MichaelB's calling the Kino an abomination stemmed largely from these subtitles which really marr the experience for me, not so much from the transfer itself, though I think that the FsF is clearly superior there, too. Better detail and clarity, more film-like. A far cry from the Japanese version, of course, but that can't be helped I guess.

[jsteffe]

Here are three more frame grab comparisons.

The Japanese DVD:


The Kino disc:


The French disc:


I've seen the production stills, and this shot was executed outdoors, in bright sunlight. It's possible that the Japanese disc is a wee bit over-exposed, and that linen looks a shade pink, but it's still the best of the three.

Now look at how heavy the shadows are on the French disc, and in general the lines are very thick. The excessive blue in the shaded areas also suggests color-bosting. This image reeks of digital enhancement.

This is just a matter of personal taste, but I actually prefer the Kino disc over the French. Even though it's an older and softer-looking transfer, it hasn't been as extensively manipulated.

[ouatitw]

Based on the previous Kino releases of Sergei Paradjanov's work, I have absolutely no excitement for these releases even though I love Paradjanov. Has any reviews of these set been posted yet. I'm very skeptical of these "remastered" versions. I've been disappointed so much with Kino, I have trouble getting my hopes up.

[vogler]

I'm very skeptical of these "remastered" versions. I've been disappointed so much with Kino, I have trouble getting my hopes up.

I imagine the "remastered" versions will be the Ruscico prints, which look pretty great in my opinion. The only problem could be pal-ntsc conversions but Kino have been doing a lot better at that lately. It should be a damn good box set (although no change with the Pomegranates disc). I'll be sticking with my Region 2 releases though, with the exception of Suram Fortress. The new Kino version should be the best version since it will feature the Georgian audio without the hideous Russian voice over (mostly).

[Tommaso]

The only problem could be pal-ntsc conversions but Kino have been doing a lot better at that lately.

That's true, but it may be that they use the old, and already converted Ruscico NTSC version for "Ashik". I have that Ruscico NTSC disc, and though there's comparatively little fault I can find with it, everybody who has seen the PAL version says it's very significantly better. On the other hand, "Surami" must be Kino's own version or at least a new master from Ruscico (probably HD nowadays, so theoretically no conversion problems) if it has the original soundtrack, and the same should go for "Shadows".

Thanks btw, jsteffe, for the direct comparison of the three "Pomegranates" discs. While it didn't necessarily change my mind about Kino vs FsF (perhaps really just a matter of taste, colourwise), I'm shocked to see how much better that Japanese disc looks. Okay, now we need to convince MoC to do a fine set with both versions together...

[vogler]

That's true, but it may be that they use the old, and already converted Ruscico NTSC version for "Ashik".

Yeah, I thought of that after I posted. I haven't seen the NTSC version.

On the other hand, "Surami" must be Kino's own version or at least a new master from Ruscico (probably HD nowadays, so theoretically no conversion problems) if it has the original soundtrack, and the same should go for "Shadows".

I was just expecting a new soundtrack, not a new transfer. I thought it would be the current Ruscico transfer with Georgian audio, but who knows.

[MichaelB]

I imagine the "remastered" versions will be the Ruscico prints, which look pretty great in my opinion.

The extras match the Ruscico specs, so that's almost certainly what they'll be releasing (though obviously a PAL-NTSC port).

The new Kino version should be the best version since it will feature the Georgian audio without the hideous Russian voice over (mostly).

Yes - that's the Kino disc I'm definitely interested in. Going from what I've heard, and bearing in mind that I already own pretty much every current Paradjanov release, I can probably do without the others - but I'll wait for the reviews before a final decision.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Could someone please post a cap of the Kino subtitles? I'm this close to buying the set (score one for Schrek and Kino), but word of the ugly subtitles is really bothering me.

[ivuernis]

Could someone please post a cap of the Kino subtitles? I'm this close to buying the set (score one for Schrek and Kino), but word of the ugly subtitles is really bothering me.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Thank you, ivuernis! These subtitles on the new DVDs aren't too bad for me after all.

[ivuernis]

Thank you, ivuernis! These subtitles on the new DVDs aren't too bad for me after all.

They're just the subtitles from Kino's Pomegranates disc, I have no idea what they'll be like on the new Kino discs.

[MichaelB]

They're just the subtitles from Kino's Pomegranates disc, I have no idea what they'll be like on the new Kino discs.

It really depends on whether they've remastered the film or not. All the signs are that the original DVD was a straight port of a master originally created for a VHS release (there's an early 1990s copyright date that's a bit of a giveaway), which probably also explains why they're so humungously large.

But it sounds as though they've made an effort with Surami Fortress (to the extent that it appears to be the most promising of all DVD editions), so fingers crossed.

[HerrSchreck]

Yea I have my doubts whether we'll be getting a new Pomegrantes. I don't know if a new restoration of the longer cut of the film has been definitively remastered/restored. In fact I tend to doubt it. The only thing I've seen that looks consistent and "a cleaner, more vibrant" representation of the vintage film is the Japanese disc, which is from the other "less definitive" (emphasis emphatic!) version of the film.

Until something definitive is done with all the films that involve those, anyone, who sat in post on them, I see no end to the splitting off into "camps" via the releases of these films. The death of SP and his cameraman doesn't bode well.

[Cabiria21]

it''s a shame there is no new Pomegranates disc, I'll just have to stick with my bootleg Japanese disc with ripped english subs until a company actually gives it some care...

[MichaelB]

DVD Beaver on the entire set.

Things discussed above which are now confirmed:

1) Pomegranates is a straight reissue of their old disc (Gary's term of choice is "eyesore" against my "abomination");
2) Shadows is in 1.33:1, not the promised (if wildly inaccurate) Scope;
3) Shadows is a Ruscico port - and so PAL users may want to check out the original. It certainly looks as though it might be a cut above the Films Sans Frontières version.
4) Surami Fortress is a Ruscico port, but with an additional soundtrack that reconstructs all but four minutes of the original unadulterated Georgian - so it's now clearly the best version;
5) Ashik Kerib is also the Ruscico port, but Kino's version is apparently superior to Ruscico's NTSC effort (though probably inferior to the PAL version, unless it's been remastered from source).

So on the basis of the review, my vote for best all-round discs would be:

Shadows - either Kino or Ruscico, depending on NTSC/PAL preference;
Pomegranates - no totally satisfying version: Columbia (Japan) best for picture but no subtitles and shorter cut; Kino best for extras but worst for picture and hideous compulsory subtitles; Films Sans Frontières probably the best compromise at present (and best for PAL users);
Surami Fortress - the new Kino: all other versions are unacceptably compromised;
Ashik Kerib - the new Kino or the old Ruscico, depending on NTSC/PAL preference.

[Tommaso]

Sounds good, as expected. It would be interesting to see a comparison of the FsF "Shadows" and the Kino, but the screen caps of this on the Beaver look strong. I'm somewhat worried about the macro-blocking Gary describes for the "Surami" disc, because I cannot remember anything like this with the Ruscico. But it's so long ago that I actually had the Ruscico I may simply have forgotten or wasn't worried about it compared to the voice-over problem. And seeing these caps from "Pomegranates" again I'm pretty sure that the FsF wasn't as blurred as the image here on the first two caps. But Gary may have picked some particularly bad moments....