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Please note: the Lindbrook Dr. entrance of the Hammer Museum will be closed due to a private event at Lulu restaurant and the courtyard. The theater can be accessed through the entrances on Wilshire Blvd. and Westwood Blvd.
Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.
Parajanov: The Last Spring
Armenia/U.S., 1992
An intimate look at the final days of Sergei Parajanov, this documentary captures the director working on his last, ultimately unrealized autobiographical film The Confession. Made by Parajanov’s close friend Mikhail Vartanov and edited by candlelight during Armenia’s wartime blockade, this touching tribute from one persecuted artist to another features behind-the-scenes footage of Parajanov shooting The Color of Pomegranates, the filmmaker’s prison art as well as a tour of his teeming Tbilisi home (now the Sergei Parajanov Museum).
DCP, color, in Russian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Georgian and English with English subtitles, 60 min. Director: Mikhail Vartanov. Screenwriters: Martiros Vartaniants, Mikhail Vartanov. With: Sergei Parajanov, Mikhail Vartanov, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Leila Alibegashvilli.
Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive in collaboration with the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Ukraine, 1965
Sergei Parajanov’s global breakthrough — a film that galvanized a new generation of filmmakers not only in Ukraine but throughout the Eastern Bloc — remains a potent blend of bravura filmmaking and spellbinding folklore. Parajanov adapts Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s 1911 novel about a snow-bound Romeo and Juliet tragedy among the Hutsul people of western Ukraine. But in Parajanov’s hands, this ageless story becomes a transcendental cinematic experience infused with poetry, song, dance and paganist folklore. Shot in the rugged Carpathian region by Yuri Ilyenko, the film is rightly renowned for the delirious abandon of its cinematography. “A tale of blood feuds, sorcery, and star-crossed love — that’s not so much lyric as lysergic ... overwhelmingly beautiful.”—J. Hoberman.
DCP, color, in Ukrainian with English subtitles, 96 min. Director: Sergei Parajanov. Screenwriter: Sergei Parajanov, Ivan Chendej. With: Ivan Mykolaichuk, Larisa Kadochnikova, Tatyana Bestayeva.
Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with the Dovzhenko Film Studio and in collaboration with the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre. Special thanks to Olena Honcharuk and Daniel Bird. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
