July 14, 2026
DokuFest is especially proud to present a programme dedicated to one of cinema's most singular and visionary voices: Sergei Parajanov. Proposed as a triptych, the three films gathered in this section offer a meditation on art, memory and place, revealing Parajanov's extraordinary ability to transform artistic practice into cinematic language.
For Parajanov, art is inseparable from the soul of the place from which it emerges. Painting, architecture, ritual and folklore become living expressions of a culture, forging an almost umbilical connection between people and the landscapes they inhabit. His cinema dissolves the boundaries between disciplines, treating images not as illustrations but as carriers of history, myth and collective memory.
As surreal as it is intimate, Parajanov's work constantly reimagines conventional notions of beauty. Echoing the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce's belief that artistic knowledge cannot be confined within rigid categories but belongs to the realm of spirit, Parajanov's films move freely between painting, theatre, music and cinema. They celebrate artistic creation as something playful, profound and impossible to classify.
The triptych opens with Arabesques on the Theme of Pirosmani, a tribute to the Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani. A self-taught artist who spent much of his life on the margins, Pirosmani found poetry in ordinary existence, elevating everyday people, animals and landscapes into timeless icons. Through his own unmistakable visual language, Parajanov transforms Pirosmani's paintings into a cinematic portrait of Georgia itself.
It is followed by Hakob Hovnatanyan, dedicated to the great Armenian portrait painter often referred to as the Raphael of Tiflis. Where Pirosmani embraced simplicity and rural life, Hovnatanyan celebrated refinement, portraiture and cosmopolitan culture. Together, these two films expand Parajanov's vision of the Caucasus, revealing a region shaped by intersecting traditions, artistic lineages and the layered influences of the Eastern world.
The programme concludes with Kyiv Frescoes, perhaps Parajanov's most haunting unfinished work. Originally conceived as a feature film about post-war Kyiv, the project was halted by Soviet authorities, leaving behind only fragments of footage after much of the material was suppressed. What survives is an astonishing cinematic collage: a work whose incompleteness becomes part of its expressive power, transforming loss itself into artistic form.
To this day, Sergei Parajanov remains one of cinema's greatest masters, renowned for turning spontaneity into carefully orchestrated visual poetry. His films resist straightforward narration, inviting viewers instead into worlds where history, folklore and imagination coexist. In this edition of DokuFest, these three extraordinary works stand as interrupted stories of art, memory and resilience.
