Mikhail Vartanov dedicated his life to defending and supporting Sergei Parajanov. It culminated with the influential masterwork Paradjanov: The Last Spring (1992), which caused a sensation at its premieres in Russia and Armenia, and the individual chapters and text of the film inspired numerous future documentaries, books and writings on Parajanov.

Mikhail Vartanov recognized Paradjanov's genius in 1964, after watching at Moscow's film institute Parajanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and the test footage of the Kiev Frescoes, which was filmed by Vartanov's VGIK classmate Aleksander Antipenko.

Mikhail Vartanov met Sergei Parajanov in 1967 in Armenia, and shared his thoughts about the screenplay of Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates). Paradjanov was impressed and they became close friends until the end.

Parajanov considered Vartanov's candidacy for the cinematographer of Sayat Nova, but due to the delays with the start of the shooting, and the Armenfilm Studios desperate need to fulfill its plans of documentary film production, Vartanov was assigned to complete several of the studio's troubled documentaries. The cinematographer of Sayat Nova became the great Suren Shakhbazyan who came from Ukraine, and had also earlier lensed Sergei Parajanov's Andriesh. Paradjanov and Shakhbazyan together at work appear in Vartanov's The Color of Armenian Land, which marked the beginning of his trademark style "direction of undirected action."

This documentary, a silent commentary of gestures by painter Martiros Saryan, also featured Mikhail Vartanov's friends - the dissident artists Minas Avetisyan and Sergei Parajanov, for which the film was censored and suppressed; Avetisyan was assassinated and Parajanov was imprisoned shortly after. Vartanov's next film, The Autumn Pastoral, written by Artavazd Peleshian and scored by composer Tigran Mansurian, was shelved.

After the premiere of Sayat Nova, Mikhail Vartanov wrote: "To me, it seems that the cinema of Sergei Paradjanov began not with the Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, as many think, but with (Sayat Nova) the Color of Pomegranates. Probably, besides the film language suggested by Griffith and Eisenstein, the world cinema has not discovered anything revolutionarily new until the Color of Pomegranates, not counting the generally unaccepted language of the Andalusian Dog by Bunuel."

After Sergei Parajanov was arrested in Kiev in 1973, Mikhail Vartanov immediately protested to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and petitioned for Parajanov's release. Vartanov's letter has only recently been declassified by the former KGB, a further proof that it was that document in support of Parajanov that prompted the intensified harassment that Vartanov endured and his subsequent firing from the Armenfilm Studios, 4 months after Parajanov's imprisonment.

From the prison, Parajanov wrote to Vartanov: "The thought of seeing and embracing you gives me the strength to live… your duty of a friend and brother you have long fulfilled…" Vartanov replied: "When I think of you there, I don't want to live…I see around me only meaninglessness …" Later, Vartanov said at screenings and interviews that he felt he had fulfilled his duty to Parajanov only after completing Paradjanov: The Last Spring, this phrase too has been repeated word for word by others. Parajanov, in another letter to Vartanov wrote: "You and your purity are colliding with circumstances and predators… That's life."

Indeed, many open and secret suppressors of Parajanov then focused on Vartanov, having recognized the opportunity to advance their personal interests and careers by attacking the free thinkers and marginalizing them. Later, after Parajanov was set free, and it was no longer dangerous to associate with him, they rushed to become his friends, and having little or no understanding of his unique contribution to the arts, frequently turned to Vartanov's writings, interviews, banned screenplays, and picked up his thoughts during personal meetings, to write and make films about Parajanov. It had become a tradition to silence Mikhail Vartanov, first to score points with the regime, and later to avoid competition.

In a letter to Parajanov in prison, Vartanov wrote, quoting his favorite poet Boris Pasternak, that "time will come and the power of meanness and malice would be overcome by the spirit of kindness." Parajanov responded to Vartanov: "Dear Misha, I received your amazing letter... Never have you been more accurate in evaluating the surrounding world...in expressing yourself..."