The Zohrab Center goes to the movies next Thursday, October 22 with the screening of Serge Avedikian’s 2013 film PARADJANOV.

Internationally known writer, translator, journalist, critic and filmmaker Christopher Atamian will introduce the film and lead a discussion.

Serge Avedikian also stars in the film, which was a joint Armenian, Ukrainian, French and Georgian collaboration. The film was was co-directed by Olena Fetsova.

Sergey Paradjanov, the brilliant Armenian filmmaker, struggled to pursue his art in the repressive atmosphere of the Soviet Union. Although he was acclaimed internationally by directors such as Fellini, Antonioni, Godard, and Tarkovsky, his non-comformist ways and insistence on the integrity of his art brought him into conflict with the Soviet regime and led to his imprisonment.

While relating Paradjanov’s persecution and his years in forced labor and prison, Avedikian’s film does not narrate Paradjanov’s life as much as portray the artistic soul and energy that animated his thought and work.

The film will be shown in Ukrainian with English subtitles.

Native New Yorker Christopher Atamian returns to the Zohrab Center to introduce the film and to lead a discussion after it has been shown.

The program will take place on Thursday, October 22 in Vartan Hall of the Armenian Diocese, 630 Second Avenue, New York, NY. A light supper will be served at 6:30pm. The 95-minute film will be shown at 7:15pm and a discussion will follow. Admission is $5. Students with ID will be admitted free.

Download a flyer by CLICKING HERE.

For further information contact the Zohrab Center at zohrabcenter@armeniandiocese.org or by phone at (212) 686-0710.

Native New Yorker Christopher Atamian is an internationally known writer, translator, journalist, critic and filmmaker. He writes for publications such as the New York Times Book Review, The Huffington Post, The Beirut Daily Star, the New Criterion, Dance Magazine and is the former dance critic for The New York Press. He produced the OBIE Award-winning play Trouble in Paradise and was included in the 2009 Venice Biennale for his video “Sarafian’s Desire.”He has translated five books and written one novel and is currently at work on seven book projects, three of which are being published in 2016 (one translation, a book of Bedros Keljik stories as editor, and a second novel), as well as producing and directing television, film and theater and a first anthology of poetry, which follows on his being included in the “An Anthology of Armenian Poets.” He is the recipient of numerous grants, awards and fellowships including the Tololyan Literary Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, a John Harvard Fellowship, the Bronfman Fellowship in Democratic Enterprise at Columbia University, Gulbenkian and AGBU grants, an AFFMA film making grant, and a 2015 Ellis Island Award. His lectures at the Zohrab Institute on film are part of his work “Deconstructing Ararat,” volume on Armenian Cinema which is forthcoming. He is fluent in ten languages and is an alumnus of Harvard University, Columbia Business School and USC Film School.