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249 Epilogue Parajanov’s Afterlife Parajanov’s experimental film language and challenging, at times subversive , subject matter place him squarely within the global art film tradition. The question of his influence within the countries of the former Soviet Union remains complicated. Younger Soviet filmmakers such as Roman Balaian (Ukraine), Artavazd Peleshian and Mikhail Vartanov (Armenia), and Rustam Khamdamov (Russia) were undoubtedly influenced by their friendship with Parajanov, though they have retained distinct stylistic identities. Another of Parajanov’s close friends, the Odessa-based Kira Muratova, has acknowledged that he served as a source of inspiration for what she calls “ornamentalism” (dekorativnost’) in her visual style, starting with her film Getting to Know the Wide World (1978).1 Still, the very uniqueness of Parajanov’s style and the dominating force of his personality meant that he ultimately lacks a clear successor. This stands in contrast to Tarkovsky, since Alexander Sokurov’s work at once arises from and extends the boundaries of what Tarkovsky accomplished. One post-Soviet filmmaker, Aktan Abdykalykov from Kyrgyzstan, borrows rather directly from Parajanov at the beginning of Beshkempir: The Adopted Son (1998). The opening sequence, which pertains to the title character’s adoption, depicts a ritual in which a group of old women lay out a cradle, various tools, and a richly colored blanket. In one shot the camera focuses on the women’s hands as they pass the blanket underneath their legs, echoing Parajanov’s fondness for showing hands as they perform ritualistic actions. Other borrowings include a shot in which the iron implements are laid out into a still-life composition and another shot focused solely on the beautiful decorative pattern on the baby blanket. The stylization of the sequence contributes to the feel of archaism, of unchanging traditions. Thus, it becomes a way of asserting, or perhaps even 250  Epilogue marketing, cultural difference within the post-Soviet, international arena of the film festival and art house distribution circuits. In the West, Parajanov’s work remains somewhat less well-known than that of Tarkovsky, who has established something of a cult following as befits an artist with messianic tendencies. Still, his aesthetics have influenced a number of younger directors. The Armenian diaspora filmmaker Don Askarian, who is based out of Germany, clearly draws upon Parajanov’s tableau style in Komitas (1988), a poetic biography of the great turn-of-the-century composer and ethnomusicologist. Indeed, Askarian’s style is such a deliberate and thorough blend of Tarkovsky and Parajanov that at least in Komitas he fails to develop a distinct identity of his own despite the worthy subject matter. In keeping with his own love for dynamic camerawork, the Serbian director Emir Kusturica makes an unmistakable allusion to Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors in his film Underground (1995), during the scene where the camera peers up from underneath the surface of the water at Blacky as he gazes down into a well. The camera spins vertiginously as he is drawn down into the water, recalling Ivan’s death in Parajanov’s film. Derek Jarman, who is fond of tableau-style shots, borrows some compositions from The Color of Pomegranates in his film of Benjamin Britten ’s War Requiem (1996). Parajanov is especially popular in Iran due to his decorative Orientalist aesthetics and his avowed interest in Persian art. Saeed Ebrahimifar’s Pomegranate and Reed (1989) alludes to The Color of Pomegranates during its wool-dyeing scene. Certainly, this allusion is more artistically effective and apropos to Ebrahimifar’s subject matter—the life and imagination of a poet—than the heavy-handed reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey that closes that film. As Levon Abrahamian argues, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s art house hit Gabbeh (1996) borrows from Parajanov to a degree that verges on plagiarism.2 Not only does this influence include his lavish use of color, tableau compositions, and an emphasis on the decorative richness of folk handicrafts such as rugs, but it extends to specifically Parajanovian techniques such as having a rug unroll before the camera and the repeated shots, joined by jump cuts, of Gabbeh carrying a jug of water on her shoulder and turning to face the camera. It is worth noting that the film is set among the Bakhtiar tribe; thus Makhmalbaf’s aesthetics exoticize a people who are probably almost as remote to urban Tehran audiences as they are to viewers in the West. Albeit less obviously, Makhmalbaf continues to cite Parajanov in The Silence (1998...

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