OREANDA-NEWS. May 20, 2010. The company is planning to make a biopic about the director Sergei Paradzhanov. “The film Paradzhanov will be one of a group of films that will be in part funded by state money granted to Central Partnership in 2010,” said general director Ruben Dishdishyan.

In March 2010 the Cinematography Support Fund divided 2 billion rubles from the state budget evenly between eight leaders in the film production industry, including Central Partnership. As Fund director Sergey Tolstikov explained to journalists on Wednesday, in order to get the budget funds, the companies had to apply based on specific projects. As of Wednesday, he said, the fund had not received any such applications.

The budget for the film has already been planned at three million EUR. In addition to the Cinematography Support Fund, the Intergovernmental fund for humanitarian cooperation between CIS countries, and the Armenian Ministry of Culture will also participate in funding the film.

The film will be directed by Anna Melikyan, whose Rusalka (2007) was nominated for an Oscar. The screenplay will be written by Irakly Kvirikidze (Andersen. Life without love. 27 Stolen Kisses, and Lunar Papa) who was personally acquainted with Paradzhanov, and the title role will be played by Sergey Fazarov (Taxi Blues, Limit, and 12). The project’s art director will be the artist, director, and screenwriter Rustam Khamdamov, whose work – in the collections of the Hermitage and the Tretyakov – Paradzhanov greatly admired. Work on the film will begin in the fall of 2010, and shooting will begin in 2011 and take place in Moscow, Kiev, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Paris, and Rotterdam.

Sergey Paradzhanov was born in 1924 in Tbilisi, and died in 1990 in Yerevan. Because of the persecution to which he was subjected, he was called ‘an Armenian born in Georgia, imprisoned in a Russian prison for Ukrainian nationalism’. In addition to truly groundbreaking films – Shades of Forgotten Ancestors (1964), The Color of Pomegranates (1968), The Legen of Suram Fortress (1984) and Ashik Kerib (1988), he was the creator of amazing collages, which are preserved at the museum of his home in Yerevan.