The Parajanov-Vartanov Institute studies, preserves and promotes the artistic legacies of the late persecuted filmmakers and "brothers-in-arts" Sergei Parajanov
Sergei Parajanov (1924-1990) created such masterpieces as the
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964) and Color of Pomegranates (1968), which are widely regarded as some of the greatest
motion pictures of all time, and were praised by Fellini, Antonioni, Godard, Bertollucci and Tarkovsky for the unique cinematic language.
Mikhail Vartanov (1937-2009) developed a method of documentary filmmaking termed the 'direction of undirected action'
and his work as a documentarian, cinematographer, and essayist became revered through such timeless films as The Color of Land (1969), Seasons (1975),
The Last Spring (1992), and The Unmailed Letters essays.
Probably, besides the film language suggested by Griffith and Eisenstein...cinema has not discovered anything revolutionarily new
until (Parajanov's) Color of Pomegranates...
Vartanov...brother-in-arts... you posses everthing an artist needs - mind, kindness, principles, freedom...Create... perhaps you're the only friend who
compels me to live...
The 2012 Parajanov-Vartanov Institute Award was presented at the closing ceremony of the Beverly Hills Film Festival
to
Mardik Martin -- the legendary screenwriter on Martin Scorsese's seminal films
Mean Streets and Raging Bull starring Robert De Niro.
Mardik Martin is among the screenwriters on WGA's list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.
The event took place at the Four Seasons Hotel on Sunday, April 29, 2012.
2012 Media
Hollywood Reporter
Los Angeles Times
Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight presented the 2011 Parajanov-Vartanov Institute Award honoring French film icon Jean Vigo (1905-1934)
to his daughter and Paris-based film critic Luce Vigo at Beverly Hills Film Festival awards held at Four Seasons Hotel on April 10, 2011.
Oscar-winning film director Martin Scorsese sent a letter to the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute for the occassion of the institute's
Jean Vigo retrospective with words on Vigo, Sergei Paradjanov and Mikhail Vartanov, all of whom were non-conformists, struggled with censorship,
left a brief filmography, remain underrated yet highly revered by the leading international intelligentsia, media, and cineastes.
"...It is fitting that the institute named in memory of Paradjanov and Mikhail Vartanov,
who made the wonderful film PARADJANOV: THE LAST SPRING, is honoring the genius of Jean Vigo
with the first Hollywood retrospective in recent years... I wish I could be there..."
2010 Media
Channel 1 TV Moscow
Hollywood Reporter
Svetlana S. Parajanov (Ukraine)
Svetlana M. Vartanov (Armenia)
Suren S. Parajanov (Ukraine)
Carlos Muguiro (Spain)
Mikael Hakhnazaryan (Germany)