Eugenia Sokolskaya
Sergei Parajanov was always hard to define, but he was best summed up
as “an Armenian born in Georgia and put in a Russian prison for
Ukrainian nationalism,” and as one of Soviet film’s creative geniuses.
In comparing Russia to the Soviet Union,
one often overlooked point is the sheer number of various ethnicities
and nationalities that made up the USSR. The USSR was not just the
Russian Federative Republic – it included 14 other republics,
politically subjugated, but culturally distinct. In much the same way,
Soviet film was not just Russian film: while the Russians had a
technological headstart, actors and directors of the various republics
eventually came into their own, drawing on their home cultures and
methods of storytelling.
