Tsvet armyanskoy zemli

1969
16m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Blacklisted for portraying his friends Paradjanov (imprisoned in 1974) and Minas (assassinated in 1975), Vartanov had to wait 20 years to complete the trilogy with Minas: Rekviem (1989) and ... Read allBlacklisted for portraying his friends Paradjanov (imprisoned in 1974) and Minas (assassinated in 1975), Vartanov had to wait 20 years to complete the trilogy with Minas: Rekviem (1989) and Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992)Blacklisted for portraying his friends Paradjanov (imprisoned in 1974) and Minas (assassinated in 1975), Vartanov had to wait 20 years to complete the trilogy with Minas: Rekviem (1989) and Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992)

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.6/10

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

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Trivia
49 years after it was made, Criterion released Vartanov's The Color of Armenian Land in 2018 with Parajanov's restored Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates). It was the first time ever that Vartanov's work became available on home video (this was preceded in 2012 by the film's first public screening in 43 years at the prestigious Busan International Film Festival's Parajanov/Vartanov retrospective).

Connections
Featured in Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992)

User reviews1

Review

Featured review

9/10

Armenian landscape and art

The 16-minute documentary Tsvet armyanskoy zemli (1969) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title The Color of Armenian Land. The movie was directed by Mikhail Vartanov.

The film has no dialect. We see scenes of the rugged Armenian landscape, as well as the work of Armenian artists, both ancient and contemporary. Among the contemporary artists there's a brief clip of Sergei Parajanov directing The Color of Pomegranates. Because Parajanov was in disfavor with the Soviet authorities, this brief clip was enough to cause the entire film to be blacklisted for 43 years--until 2012.

Director Vartanov was a close friend of Parajanov, and he tried to get Parajanov out of prison. This was enough to have him blacklisted for many years.

We saw this movie as a Criterion Collection extra for Parjanov's masterpiece, The Color of Pomegranates. Howerver, the film will stand on its own, although it will be more meaningful if it's understood in context. The IMDb rating for this movie is an anemic 6.6. I thought it was much better than that, and rated it 9.