Georgi Daneliya - Kin-Dza-Dza (1986)

Wikipedia wrote:
Kin-dza-dza! (Russian: Кин-дза-дза!, translit. Kin-dzah-dzah!) is a 1986 Soviet comedy-science fiction film released by the Mosfilm studio and directed by Georgi Daneliya, with a story by Georgi Daneliya and Revaz Gabriadze. The movie was filmed in color, consists of two parts and runs for 135 minutes in total.

The film is a dark and grotesque parody of human society and may be described as a dystopia. It depicts a desert planet, depleted of its resources, home to an impoverished dog-eat-dog society with extreme inequality and oppression. It is a cult film, especially in post-Soviet countries, and its humorous dialogue is frequently quoted.

Sergei Parajanov - I am Sergei Parajanov! (1990)

Synopsis:
I am Sergei Parajanov! shot a few months after Parajanov's death. Features archive photographs, his collages, the clips from Sayat-Nova (1968), Ashik Kerib (1988), the making of The Legend of the Surami Fortress (1984) and a few views of the house he lived.

Sergei Parajanov - Kiev Frescos (1966)

LINK

A lyrical portrait of life in a contemporary Armenian village following the devastation of an earthquake and the fall of communism.

Quote:

Kievski Freski Dir Sergei Paradjanov (Kiev Frescos) 1966. 35mm. 13 mins
Paradjanov assembled this "film collage" from the rushes and tests that remained unscathed after the Soviet authorities halted the production of Kiev Frescos and ordered the negative to be destroyed.

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When the Soviet authorities were imposing on a multi-national country the artificial conception of a "homogeneous Soviet people", Paradjanov was defending those nations' very diversity and uniqueness. Through films and documentaries (both by Paradjanov and others), this programme attempts to trace Paradjanov's creative journeys through Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia.

Soon after the Soviet authorities stopped the shooting of Kiev Frescos (Kievski Freski) in 1966, Sergei Paradjanov left Dovchenko film studios in Kiev for Armenfilm in Yerevan. There he started work on a feature length homage to Sayat Nova, the pseudonym of the Haroutine Sayadian (Tblissi, 1712 - 1795), an Armenian poet and bard, who wrote in Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani.

Sergei Parajanov - Pervyy paren aka The First Lad (1959)

A gem from Paradjanov's early oeuvre is a musical agitation film or a romantic comedy, made by the young director under the guidance of Alexander Dovzhenko and set in the immense fields of the collectivised Ukraine. The social realism is replaced by colourful, convivial and dancing shots of the “Pabieda” (Victory) kolkhoz, where peasant women sing in the fields, and boys march with banners glorifying revolution. Against this backdrop, intense romantic feelings have reached a climactic stage; tailor Sidor Sidorovich, farmer Jushka and soldier Danila Petrovich all dote on the fair-haired Odarka. It is Jushka and Danila who engage in overt hostility; the initial “gentlemen’s” contest turns into an outright confrontation, resulting in miserable Jushka being increasingly more desperate and scorned by the villagers.

Sergei Parajanov - Ashugi Qaribi aka The Hoary Legends of the Caucasus (1988)

Based on a story by Russian author Mikhail Lermontov, Ashik Kerib has the texture of an ancient, oft-told tale. Yuri Mgoyan stars as a wandering troubadour, working the provinces. He spends 1000 days and nights on the road, entertaining whenever and wherever he can. Mgoyan's itinerant lifestyle seemingly has little purpose, but it does. At the end of those 1000 days and nights, he hopes to have accumulated enough money to afford a wedding...if his bride is willing to wait.

Tengiz Abuladze - Monanieba aka Repetance (1987)

synopsis

Repentance (Pokayaniye) features Avtandil Makharadze in a dual role. As Georgian mayor Varlam Aravidze, Makharadze is a strutting, arbitrarily cruel dictator, something of a composite Stalin and Hitler. Visually he very closely resembles Lavrentiy Beriya, Stalin's right hander and one-time KGB chief. As Abel, the mayor's son, Makharadze finds himself in the middle of an ideological squabble when his father dies. Zeinab Botsvadze, a local woman who had suffered mightily under the mayor's regime, refuses to allow the old man's corpse to be interred. Despite the son's Herculean efforts, Botsvadze continues digging up the late mayor's body, a symbolic gesture to prevent the dead man's villainy from being forgotten. Repentance was the first Soviet film that openly denounced the horrors of Stalinism, though the Georgian director Tengiz Abuladze (known for his poetic and surrealist films) chose to make it allegorical, deliberately using anachronisms and making the leading character look like a combination of Stalin's henchman Lavrenti Beriya, Hitler, and Mussolini. An interesting point -- the last name chosen for the leading character is totally fictional, there is no such name as Aravidze in Georgia. In fact, "aravi" means "nobody" in Georgian. The filmmakers opted for such a name in order not to offend any real person in the Republic of Georgia. Filmed in 1984, Repentance fell victim to Soviet censorship from the moment it left the editing room. When it was finally released in 1987, the film was deservedly garlanded with several awards, including the Cannes Film Festival Special Jury Prize.
ial turn this film into a searing allegory of the brutal repressions, and heroic sacrifices, of the country's Stalinist era-----by Hal Erickson

Tengiz Abuladze - Vedreba AKA The Plea (1967)

comment from imdb

A masterpiece that demands detailed study

It's like Bergman and Kurosawa went to Georgia and decided to do Shakespeare together in the mountains. I've seen this film several times and there's much I still haven't grasped. It's not an intellectual problem, but a cultural one...VEDREBA seems so deeply embedded in Georgian history that it's nearly impossible for an outsider to find a way in.

The film is based entirely on the poetry of Vazha Pshavela, and I believe every line of "dialogue" is lifted directly from his poems. From what I can gather, the "story" concerns a soldier who, after feeling guilty about killing an enemy, becomes an outcast from whatever group he belongs to, then has visitations from both God and the devil who give him visions of the future (or perhaps one possible future). A full understanding of the film would seem to require knowledge of all the different groups of people living in the mountains of ancient Georgia, as well as a basic grasp of several various rituals. For instance, I have no idea what the significance of the main character beheading another man's bull was, nor do I understand why, when said bull-owner calls for the lead to be killed, several other people began extinguishing candles in bowls of sheep's blood.

Sergei Parajanov - Ambavi Suramis tsikhitsa (Легенда о Сурамской крепости) AKA The Legend of Suram Fortress (1984)

Parajanov was born in 1924 (..) In 1964, Parajanov stunned critics and audiences with "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors", a baroque and free-wheeling adaptation of Romeo and Juliet-like Carpathian folklore involving two lovers separated by quarreling families and their tragic fates amid everyday village life and religious ritual. Visually stunning (the opening sequence involves the camera riding atop a falling tree), it was condemned for its brash formalism in a time when Kruschev had attacked abstract art, bringing an end to the post-Stalinist cultural "thaw" of the late-'50s and early '60s. The film was quickly removed from Soviet screens and precipitated Parajanov's extended battles with Soviet authorities. Kiev Frescos was cancelled mid-shoot because of its "bourgeois subjectivism and mysticism" (Ackerman) and Sayat-Nova (The Color of Pomegranates) (1969) was immediately banned and later released in a drastically re-edited form.

Sergei Parajanov - Sayat Nova aka The Color of Pomegranates (1968)

Quote:
The work of painter, musician, mystic and filmmaker Sergei Paradjanov (1924-1990) constantly defies categorisation. His films are notable for their lyrical inspiration and great aesthetic beauty, but riled the Soviet authorities to such an extent that Paradjanov faced constant harrassment throughout his life. Like his earlier film, Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1965), The Colour of Pomegranates was banned...
Ostensibly a biopic of rebellious 18th century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, The Colour of Pomegranates follows the poet's path from his childhood wool-dying days to his role as a courtier and finally his life as a monk. But Armenian director Sergei Paradjanov warns us from the start that this is no ordinary biopic: "This is not a true biography," he has his narrator state during the opening credits.