Carzou

Jean Carzou (1 January 1907 – 17 August 2000)

The great French artist Jean Carzou and Mikhail Vartanov met in 1984 during the filming of a documentary “Carzou” at the Soviet Armenfilm Studios. Vartanov, whose essay on Carzou was on the cover of the top literary magazines in Russian and Armenian around the same time, wanted to be approved as the director, especially given that his blacklist was more or less lifted after Sergei Parajanov had been freed from the prison, and permitted to work that year also. (Vartanov had been blacklisted for filming Parajanov in 1969 and for petitioning for his release from the Soviet Ukrainian prison in 1974).

But the studio wanted a film that conformed to the sanctioned Soviet style, while Vartanov proposed a deeper reading of the achievements of this great French-Armenian artist. In the end,  as they had done with the William Saroyan documentary, and several other films, the studio assigned the project to a “conformist” director, and attached Vartanov as the cinematographer to guarantee the visual quality.

Below Carzou films Vartanov with his 8mm Canon while Vartanov films Carzou with his 35mm camera Konvas.

In 2007, Jean Carzou’s son, Jean-Marie Carzou, attended a screening of Mikhail Vartanov’s masterwork Parajanov: The Last Spring along with Sofiko Chiaureli, and Jean Vigo’s daughter Luce Vigo. Afterwards, Jean-Marie Carzou invited Vartanov to Jean Carzou’s studio, which was an unforgettable experience.

Jean Carzou was awarded France’s National Order of Merit and was elected to the Academie des Beaux-Arts in 1977. He was the first French painter whose work appeared on a French postal stamp and he was the member of the jury at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.

Parajanov-Vartanov Institute