Ashik Kerib

Ashik Kerib is a poor minstrel; the father of the girl he loves is rich and refuses him. They set a condition: he will travel for a thousand days, earn money and return. Kerib goes from country to country with his saz, plays in palaces, is deceived and robbed, and as the time runs out he is still far away. Sergei Parajanov directs, with Dodo Abashidze as co-director and actor. The source is a text Mikhail Lermontov compiled from an Azerbaijani folk tale. The language is not narrative but tableau. The scenes are built as flat compositions arranged towards the front; the actors face the camera and movement is reduced to a minimum. Parajanov used this method in all his films. Colour, cloth, carpet and object are the actual material. That order, drawn from the Caucasian and Persian miniature tradition, stands closer to a museum than to cinema. Parajanov spent years in prison and was long prevented from making films; this is among the last he completed afterwards. It is dedicated to the memory of Andrei Tarkovsky. Sound and image work separately; the speech is dubbed, the music is continuous, and the two deliberately never quite meet. Who it is for: viewers who follow Parajanov and films fed by a visual tradition. Who it is not for: there is no plot to follow, there is almost no acting, and the film does not narrate at all in the usual sense.