One of the most daringly experimental films ever made, and produced in pre-Glasnost USSR, where it was quickly banned, the Colour of Pomegranates comes to Curzon Bloomsbury this Sunday.

Sergei Parajanov’s tribute to the Armenian poet Sayat Nova rethinks the very nature of cinematic space.

Parajanov spent five years exiled in a Soviet prison camp for the ‘transgression’ of creating this mystical, wildly beautiful film. 

Woven patterns and colours of traditional textiles and customs provide him with a different visual model. The way in which clothing sculpts and defines the body, creating a space neither flat nor deep but attuned to both the senses of touch and vision, inspires the discontinuous tableaux that make up this film.

Textures and colours spill across each other as space dissolves into a succession of surfaces and shapes.

Figures, gestures, textiles, costumes, and architecture merge in a shallow but endlessly varied space.

Woven and embroidered textiles mould or conceal bodies and space in the rituals of birth and death that compose a film that seems to emanate from another world.

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COMPETITION: Win 1x pair of tickets to attend Fashion in Film Festival presents The Colour of Pomegranates at Curzon Bloomsbury on 20th March at 18:30. To enter the competition, send an email to ava@run-riot.com with the correct answer in the ‘subject’ line. The winner will be randomly selected.

Q: The film includes poetry from which Armenian poet?

A: .1) Hovhannes Shiraz .2) Yeghishe Charents .3) Raffi .4) Sayat-Nova