A Web site featuring museum exhibitions in Russia (www.museum.ru) announced the opening of an art exhibition

on prominent Armenian filmmaker Sergei Paradzhanov (1924-1990) in the St. Petersburg State Ethnography Museum on June 8.

The exhibition features 60 drawings, collages, hats, and dolls from the Paradzhanov Museum in Yerevan.

Paradzhanov was born to an Armenian family in Tbilisi. He graduated from the Cinematography Institute in Moscow. He was hailed as one of

the world's best directors for his movies Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964) and Color of the Pomegranate (1969). He won over 30 awards

at international film festivals, including Mar del Plata (1964), Tel Aviv, Munich, Constantinople, and Moscow.

Paradzhanov wrote a number of interesting scripts that were rejected by Communist Party leaders, while the filmmaker suffered under the

cruelty of the Soviet system. He was not allowed to shoot movies for 15 years. In 1973 he was arrested on fabricated charges and spent five

years in prison. Despite these circumstances, he continued to create works of art. For example, he made figurines from bread and sent them

to his friends.

Famous cultural figures, including Lilya Brik, the wife of the great proletarian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, campaigned for his early

release. Paradzhanov was set free a year earlier in 1977.

Event source: www.en.rian.ru

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