Dok Night – SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS 1964 (Тіні забутих предків) Directed by Sergi Parajanov
21 November @ 6:00 pm - 11:00 pm
Every Thursday there’s a Vegan Dinner accompanying an exhibition opening/closing, a live performance, live music, movie screening or …
Come meet other people interested in art and activism, good food and great prices. Bring your favourite game and your friends. Or meet new people at the bar.
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18.00 Bar open
19.00 Vegan Food /// 2-course meal for 7 – 10 €
20.30 !!FILM!! (free screening)
SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS 1964
(Тіні забутих предків)
Directed by Sergi Parajanov
97 minutes
In Ukrainian with English subtitles
This is the gorgeously photographed feature film by the greatest post-war Georgian-Soviet director; Sergi Parajanov. Despite the fact that Parajanov is one of the most internationally acclaimed directors of all time, his films are rarely shown today. I would say the reason for this is that now we live under ‘capitalist realism’, meaning movies have to be dumbed-down in order to make money in a consumer economy. When we projected Parajanov’s classic The Color of Pomegranates (Sayat Nova), the audience was blown away.
Parajanov would often get in trouble with Soviet authorities because his wild, crazy, visionary movies reached back to the pagan, ethnic roots of the places he shot in. Another reason was that he was bisexual, and therefore queer, which was as criminal in the Soviet bloc as it was here in the west. As a result, he spent many years in jail. Andrei Tarkovsky was a great friend of his and also one of his firmest defenders. This film is a deceptively simple love story, but it is also a spellbinding blend of mythology, hypnotic religious iconography, Ukrainian poetry and pagan magic. The movie is sublime, and at times it veers off the cinematic map completely to become a delirious, spinning, psychedelic trip. Some critics consider this to be Parajanov’s greatest masterpiece.
In fact this film belongs to an in-between world of ghosts and shadows, thick with a heathen atmosphere. In a way, it has a straightforward romantic narrative… but the way this simple love story is conveyed is extremely visual, unearthing the harsh beauty of the Soviet-Ukrainian soul. It is nothing short of a cinematic earthquake, a stunning document of a forgotten time and culture. The fierce cinematography was crafted by Yurii Illienko, director of The Eve of Ivan Kupala.
Raw, authentic, pure pagan poetry. A magnificent film that should be seen by anyone who is even slightly interested in real cinema… and once again it is a film that is criminally never ever screened anymore.
“Astonishing…extraordinary. One of the supreme works of Soviet cinema.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum
A series of socially engaged movies, screened once a month on Thursdays. Touching on such hot topics as immigration, homelessness, racism, education, radical gender propositions, the pandemic and gentrification, these films not only explore visionary politics, but are also chosen to stir our imagination and creativity. The essence of cinema is the collective experience, and these screenings are aimed at creating intimate communities again in an increasingly hectic and fragmented world.
