About

I’m currently the Film Studies and Media Librarian at Emory University in Atlanta. Although my primary passion and expertise is film, I also love literature, music and other arts and their various lofty and base manifestations.

 In 2005 I received a Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University, with a certificate in Film Studies. My dissertation was on the Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov (1924-1990), who is admired throughout the world for his remarkable visual style and his creative use of local folkore and traditional cultures. (His name is also commonly spelled Paradjanov.) His four major films are: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Ukraine, 1964), The Color of Pomegranates (1969), The Legend of Suram Fortress (Georgia, 1985) and Ashik Kerib (Georgia/Azerbaijan, 1988). All four films are available on DVD, but you should see then on the big screen if you ever get the chance. I’m currently writing a book on Parajanov’s films and his conflicts with the Soviet authorities.

Before emigrating to the Southeast, I lived in Las Vegas for over twenty years. My scattered observations on that city somehow ended up as a novel, though I have no clear recollection of how it happened.

Oh yes… apparently I’ve also written nearly 150 articles and reviews for Turner Classic Movies. I have no clear recollection of how that happened, either.

The blog name “dreams and pomp” comes from Ghazal XI in Gertrude Bell’s classic translations of Hafiz, the great 14th century Persian poet:

What meaning do our dreams and pomp convey,
Save that beside a mighty stream, wide-fed,
We sit and sing of wine and go our way!

 Header image: detail from Khosrow at Shirin’s Palace, Tabriz School, Iran, 15th century.