Summer Screenings | Ashik Kerib (1988)

TARQ is delighted to host the screening of 'Ashik Kerib' - a film directed by Sergei Parajanov and David Abashidze. This is the third film in our five-part film series titled 'Becoming Epic - Myth, Legend and Folk Tale through Colour and Sound'. The series has been conceptualized by Mumbai based film scholar, Elroy Pinto. The screenings are accompanied by a series of essays of the same title by Pinto. 

Ashik Kerib, inspired by Mikhail Lermontov’s 1837 story is about a minstrel who has to earn riches before he can get the hand of his beloved, Magul-Megeri. As Ashik Kerib traverses through the land, we enter into a pure poetic vision of cinema, one that's built in childhood reverie of Parajanov. Parajanov is renowned for developing the epic idiom through a Tableaux version of cinema. Ashik Kerib flourishes through a poetic movement that is amalgamated with his understanding of Persian miniatures. Parajanov’s evocation is not limited to strict iconography and reproduction of miniature positioning, but it is in carefully conceptualised and developed rhythmic intensities that visually manifest themselves through the repeated actions and constant fixed movement.

Parajanov extends us an invitation to our own reverie, it registers in our inner being. Colour, sound, reverie thus establish themselves as cohesive elements of nature that reject western conventions of narrative cinema.
 
Note: This film is being screened with permission from the Russian Cinema Council.