Comments on: Vita http://www.jamesmsteffen.net Reflections and news about film and other arts. Sun, 27 Nov 2011 18:53:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: James Steffen http://www.jamesmsteffen.net/vita/comment-page-1/#comment-223 James Steffen Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:26:01 +0000 http://www.jamesmsteffen.net/?page_id=64#comment-223 Thanks for your note! It's been a challenge juggling the huge amount of material I have to work with, but I think I've found a solution. At this point I see it as two books - a shorter monograph on his films and a full biography. I'm doing the "films of" book first. I'd like to hold off on the biography until I can access some more archives, including hopefully his KGB file. There were a number of scenes that Parajanov shot which didn't make it into the final cut of the film, including those Grigorian included in his documentary. Some may have been cut due to censorship, but probably most were cut because they didn't turn out the way Parajanov wanted or because they didn't fit into the film as it was taking shape. However, the footage is uniformly striking and deserves to be more widely seen. It would be great to include the footage as a supplement to a DVD special edition of the film. I describe the outtakes in more detail in my book chapter on "Pomegranates." Remarkably, about 4 hours worth of outtakes from the film were shown on Italian TV a few years back. The Parajanov Museum in Yerevan also beautiful color production stills of most, if not all of the discarded scenes. Thanks for your note! It’s been a challenge juggling the huge amount of material I have to work with, but I think I’ve found a solution. At this point I see it as two books – a shorter monograph on his films and a full biography. I’m doing the “films of” book first. I’d like to hold off on the biography until I can access some more archives, including hopefully his KGB file.

There were a number of scenes that Parajanov shot which didn’t make it into the final cut of the film, including those Grigorian included in his documentary. Some may have been cut due to censorship, but probably most were cut because they didn’t turn out the way Parajanov wanted or because they didn’t fit into the film as it was taking shape. However, the footage is uniformly striking and deserves to be more widely seen. It would be great to include the footage as a supplement to a DVD special edition of the film. I describe the outtakes in more detail in my book chapter on “Pomegranates.” Remarkably, about 4 hours worth of outtakes from the film were shown on Italian TV a few years back. The Parajanov Museum in Yerevan also beautiful color production stills of most, if not all of the discarded scenes.

]]> By: Richard Leigh http://www.jamesmsteffen.net/vita/comment-page-1/#comment-222 Richard Leigh Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:15:05 +0000 http://www.jamesmsteffen.net/?page_id=64#comment-222 Hi - I've just read your Parajanov issue of the Armenian Review.(I discovered its existence at the recent festival about him at the NFT in London. Can you tell me when your book is likely to appear? The more I learn about "Colour of Pomegranate/Pomegrataes/Sayat Nova/etc, the more confused I become! I'm not clear, for example, about the extra bits on the DVD by Levon Grigorian, which I was lucky enough to find in the NFT shop. Some bits look as if they might be early versions (with different actors) of some scenes, other bits look more like excised parts of the final film. And so on.... To say nothing of the rest of his career. I look forward very much to reading your book when it's published. All the best Richard Leigh Hi – I’ve just read your Parajanov issue of the Armenian Review.(I discovered its existence at the recent festival about him at the NFT in London. Can you tell me when your book is likely to appear? The more I learn about “Colour of Pomegranate/Pomegrataes/Sayat Nova/etc, the more confused I become! I’m not clear, for example, about the extra bits on the DVD by Levon Grigorian, which I was lucky enough to find in the NFT shop. Some bits look as if they might be early versions (with different actors) of some scenes, other bits look more like excised parts of the final film. And so on…. To say nothing of the rest of his career. I look forward very much to reading your book when it’s published.
All the best
Richard Leigh

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