The Colour of Pomegranates

The Colour of Pomegranates is a 1969 Soviet film directed by Sergei Parajanov, loosely depicting the life of the eighteenth century Armenian poet Sayat-Nova through a series of static, tableau-like images rather than conventional narrative or dialogue. Parajanov drew on Armenian religious iconography, folk art and medieval manuscript illumination to construct each frame as a symbolic composition, a style that departed sharply from Soviet cinema's dominant socialist realism. Suppressed and altered by Soviet authorities after its completion, it is now widely regarded as one of the major achievements of Armenian and Soviet era art cinema.