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Some films tell a story. And then there’s The Color of Pomegranates, which prefers to slit a pomegranate, place three icons, float a red cloth and let your vertigo settle in peace. In 1969 Sergei Parajanov set out to make a film about Sayat-Nova, an 18th-century Armenian poet. A typical biopic is tidy: birth, love, career, death, a melancholy shot, credits. Parajanov chose another route: he turned the poet’s life into a visual rite. Red pomegranates. Wet fabrics. Stilled faces. Gestures that read like prayers. Frames so deliberately composed they could be religious paintings gone nocturnal. The film rarely bothers to explain. It makes you feel: childhood, desire, faith, pain, beauty, death, freedom. The USSR, unsurprisingly, didn’t hand it a medal for neat categorization. The film was cut, retitled, and restricted. But that’s often the fate of images that refuse to be tamed: the more a system clamps down, the more irresistible they become. The Color of Pomegranates remains one of cinema’s most hypnotic works. And frankly, it’s a relief sometimes to watch a film that doesn’t pretend to be a committee. Quick facts: Work: The Color of Pomegranates / La Couleur de la grenade Director: Sergei Parajanov Country / Year: Armenia / USSR, 1969 Watch the film via the link in bio. Credits: Images: The Color of Pomegranates, Sergei Parajanov, 1969 / D.R. Subject: Sayat-Nova.