Today marks the 95th anniversary of Sergei Parajanov`s birth 

ArmInfo.Today, January 9 marks the 95th anniversary of the birth of film director, screenwriter and artist Sergei Parajanov. His films "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors",  "Ashik-Kerib", and "Color of Pomegranate" brought him a reputation as  a master of "poetic cinema" and made him world renown.

Italian perfectionist Michelangelo Antonioni called Parajanov's films  Perfection of Beauty. Employees of Sergei Parajanov's house-museum  told ArmInfo that today they visited the Pantheon of the Komitas  park, then they gathered in the museum where a reception was  organized. The museum today also received visitors for free -  admirers of the great Master's talent.

Sergey Iosifovich Parajanov (Sarkis Hovsepovich Parajanyan) was born  on January 9, 1924 in Tbilisi (at that time Tiflis) in the Armenian  family of Tbilisi antique dealer. He has absorbed love of antiques  since childhood. Therefore, he did not use any props while shooting  his films, everything was only original.  Because of this, his films  were jokingly called "the ideal commission shop." "Beautiful things  came to our house. They came and then ... disappeared; tables and  chairs, rococo chests, antique cameos, vases, exquisite oriental  carpets. Various eras and styles came to the house and went. Father  traded antiques. I spent my childhood among these things. I was very  attached to them and the more I was growing up, the more I wanted to  communicate with them as with living beings. At night, I secretly  looked at and caressed the expensive oriental fabric with hand  embroidery of incredible beauty, saying goodbye to it, since the next  day it would leave me forever ...'' he recalled.

Sergei Parajanov's creativity is considered one of the peaks of  poetic cinema.  His films were like collages which he made in huge  quantities of broken glassware, candy wrappers and fragments of  cards. Now all these voluminous applications, drawings and designer  dolls can be seen in the museum in Yerevan.  However, in his life the  director faced not only success and recognition. Soviet system  brutally treated him, removing 15 years from the cinema. The system  did not tolerate the spirit of freedom. And Sergey Iosifovich was not  only free genius. He personified freedom as a way of life and  thinking.  In the early 1970s, Parajanov was arrested on trumped-up  charges and imprisoned in a high-security prison.  Then he could not  find a job. When Sergei Parajanov passed away, many admitted that the  world of cinema had lost one of its wizards. Sergey Iosifovich  Parajanov died on July 21, 1990 from lung cancer in Yerevan, where he  came to work on the autobiographical picture "Confession". ''Everyone  knows that I have three homelands. I was born in Georgia, worked in  Ukraine and I am going to die in Armenia,'' he said.