The National Commission for Rehabilitation in Ukraine, 50 years later, rehabilitated film director Sergei Parajanov, convicted in the USSR under the article on “sodomy”, reported Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.
The decision states that after a detailed analysis of the criminal case and other archival documents, a political motive was identified in the prosecution and conviction of the director.
The commission’s decision was made at its last meeting in December, clarified head of the Institute of National Memory Andrey Drobovich. According to him, the Office of the President of Ukraine and Ukrainian human rights activists supported the consideration of Parajanov’s case.
The Institute of National Remembrance calls the commission’s decision against Parajanov a landmark precedent for the consideration of other high-profile cases of Ukrainian dissidents who were convicted by the communist totalitarian regime on trumped-up charges.
For the first time, Sergei Parajanov, born on January 9, 1924 into an Armenian family in Georgia, was accused of sodomy in 1948. At the trial, he did not deny his homosexuality. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but soon released after Alexander Dovzhenko stood up for him. Human rights activists called this case political.
At the end of 1973, Parajanov was again arrested on charges of homosexual relations and sentenced to five years in maximum security camps on charges of pornography, “sodomy” and “sodomy with violence.” Human rights activists believed that one of the reasons for the persecution of Parajanov was his friendship with Ukrainian dissidents. After the verdict of Parajanov’s release demanded Lilya Brik, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini and other famous cultural figures. The director was released on December 31, 1977.
In addition, Parajanova were arrested in 1982 – on charges of bribing an official after he wanted to get his nephew into university. The director spent several months in a Tbilisi prison and was released with a suspended sentence. Parajanov died in 1990.
Sergei Parajanov is considered one of the founders of the “Soviet new wave” and “poetic cinema.” Among his most famous films are the 1964 films “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” and 1969 “The Color of Pomegranates.”
2024-01-09 17:42:00
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