Parajanov Sergey Iosifovich

Parajanov Sergey Iosifovich

Genus. in 1924 in Tbilisi. In 1942-1945. studied at the vocal department of the Tbilisi Conservatory and at the construction department of the Tbilisi Institute of Railway Engineers. In 1949, he got a job as an assistant director at the Dovzhenko Kyiv Film Studio, where he worked until 1960; then he was a director at the Armenfilm and Georgia-Film studios. In 1952 he graduated from the directing department of VGIK.
In 1965-1968 together with other famous figures of Ukrainian science and culture, protesting against mass political arrests in the Ukrainian SSR, he appealed to the highest party and state bodies with a demand to explain the reasons for the persecution of Ukrainian intellectuals and advocated for open trials, which should ensure the fairness of the consideration of cases. In 1968, his signature was the first to sign the Letter of 139 Intellectuals against Illegal Political Trials. He has repeatedly spoken out for respect for freedom of speech in the press. Having become the object of persecution and trying to avoid arrest, he was forced to leave for the Armenian SSR. On December 17, 1973, the film director was arrested in Kiev, where he came to visit his sick son, on charges of sodomy with the use of violence (Article 122 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, parts 1, 2) and was sentenced to 5 years in prison. He was kept in Lukyanovsk prison and a colony in Alchevsk.
Thanks to an international protest campaign (appeals signed by Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky, Mikhail Vartanov and Louis Aragon, who personally addressed Brezhnev) he was released on December 30, 1977. Due to the ban on living in Ukraine, Parajanov settled in Tbilisi. He died of lung cancer on July 21, 1990 in Yerevan.