In 1965, Soviet filmmaker Sergei Parajanov was riding high following the critical and commercial success of the great Ukrainian film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Tapped by the government to make a movie celebrating the 20th anniversary of the defeat of the German army, Parajanov shot a series of highly composed tableaus for what would be Kyiv Frescoes. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets hated it and buried the footage for decades. Now, the surviving 15 minutes have been unearthed, restored, and are available on KinoNow.com for free with a suggested donation to The Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre, Ukraine’s largest film archive. It’s a beautiful short, and donations will go a long way to help preserve Ukraine’s cinematic history.

Kyiv Frescoes (1966)
Produced and directed by Sergei Parajanov
Written by Sergei Parajanov, Pavlo Zagrebelny
Starring: Tengiz Archvadze, Vladimir Artman, Alexandr Kotchekov
Running time 15 minutes

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The above blurb first appeared in the pages of Boulder Weekly Vol. 29, No. 38, “All eyes on Europe.”