Andrei Tarkovsky
“Always with huge gratitude and pleasure I remember the films of Sergei Parajanov, which I love very much. His way of thinking, his paradoxical poetical… ability to love the beauty and ability to be absolutely free within his own vision.”
—Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Parajanov and his best friend Mikhail Vartanov were all graduates of the world’s oldest film school, the legendary Moscow Film Institute (VGIK) named after Gerasimov. Tarkovsky, Paradjanov and Vartanov met several times. Tarkovsky once inscribed and sent his child’s drawings to the imprisoned Parajanov who annotated and forwarded them to Vartanov as blessings of the birth of his son Martiros Vartanov.
Mikhail Vartanov’s Russian Academy Award-winning Parajanov: The Last Spring features a poetic chapter on the the friendship of Parajanov and Tarkovsky. The premiere of Parajanov: The Last Spring in Spain was attended by Andrei Tarkovsky’s sister Marina Tarkovsky and his brother-in-law Aleksandr Gordon (co-director of Tarkovsky’s film Killers) who both praised Vartanov’s Paradjanov: The Last Spring.
Their meetings became part of this exhibition.
“This film (Parajanov: The Last Spring) is a gift… a treasure for the soul… Here, the art of cinema reveals its very best qualities…”
—Aleksandr Gordon
(co-director of Tarkovsky’s Killers)
Parajanov-Vartanov Institute 
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