Parajanov-Vartanov Institute
POB 17257
Beverly Hills, California 90209 USA
Beverly Hills Film Festival:
Hollywood Reporter:
ent_display/awards/news/e3id9db7bed8e9402cb8919dc2 e7eaac134
HOLLYWOOD, CA — To recognize the underappreciated role women play in
the lives of artists, the first annual Parajanov-Vartanov Awards will
be presented to the spouses of the late influential filmmakers Sergei
Parajanov (1924-1990) and Mikhail Vartanov (1937-2009).
For his commitment to the independent and underrated cinema, the
founder of the Beverly Hills Film Festival, Nino Simone, will also be
honored with the Parajanov-Vartanov Award. The awards will be handed
out by the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute during the gala awards
ceremony of the 10th Annual Beverly Hills Film Festival on April 18,
2010 at the Four Seasons Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills,
California.
The awards ceremony will be preceded at 3pm by a rare showing of
Vartanov’s `Parajanov: The Last Spring’ at UCLA in the James Bridges
Theater, Melnitz Hall, located at 235 Charles E. Young Drive, Los
Angeles, CA 90095. The screening will be accompanied by a short
classical music concert and a photography exhibition, I Will Wear Your
Beret Papa, from the last month’s showing at the Condestable Palace in
Navarra, Spain.
Sergei Parajanov (1924-1990) is widely regarded as one of the greatest
masters of cinema and has been called a genius, a master and a
magician by legends like Fellini, Antonioni, Godard, and Tarkovsky.
Paradjanov’s masterpieces, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964), and
Sayat Nova or The Color of Pomegranates (1968), often turn up on the
lists of the best motion pictures of all time.
Mikhail Vartanov (1937-2009) developed a method of documentary
filmmaking termed the ‘direction of undirected action’ and his
reputation as one of the most important cinematographers,
documentarians and intellectuals of his generation was cemented by
such influential documentary films as The Seasons of the Year (1975),
Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992), and a series of essays including
The Unmailed Letters.
Mrs. Parajanov and Mrs. Vartanov – the Ukrainian pedagogue Svetlana
Sherbatiuk and the Armenian film editor Svetlana Manucharian – have
stood by their husbands in the difficult times of persecutions and
significantly contributed to the preservation of these masters’
oeuvres. Nino Simone founded the Beverly Hills Film Festival in 2001
and resurrected such important forgotten films as D.W. Griffith’s `In
Old California’ (1910), Mikhail Vartanov’s `Parajanov: The Last
Spring’ (1992), and Eugenio Cappuccio’s `Towards the Moon with
Fellini’ (2006).
"To me…besides…Griffith and Eisenstein, the world cinema has not
discovered anything revolutionarily new until (Parajanov’s) Color of
Pomegranates" wrote Mikhail Vartanov in 1968. "Vartanov…you posses
everything an artist needs – mind, kindness, principles, freedom…
Create… perhaps you’re the only friend who compels me to live" said
Sergei Parajanov in a 1974 letter from Soviet prisons.
The Parajanov-Vartanov Award presentation and the UCLA screening are
held in the framework of the 2010 Beverly Hills Film Festival. The
screening is cosponsored by the UCLA Armenian Studies Program, the
Friends of UCLA Armenian Language and Culture Studies, the Center for
Near Eastern Studies, and the Center for European and Eurasian
Studies.
Parajanov-Vartanov Institute promotes the artistic legacies of the
late influential filmmakers Sergei Parajanov (1924-1990) and Mikhail
Vartanov (1937-2009). Beverly Hills Film Festival was founded in 2001
to showcase the independent cinema in the renowned city of Beverly
Hills.
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For more information, photographs and interviews please contact the
[email protected].