Free as a Bird 

He would have been 75 on January 9. Paradzhanov died eight years ago and was buried in Armenia, his ancestral home, but Ukraine does and will cherish his name with special reverence and tenderness, perhaps not only because he made The Shadows of the Forgotten Ancestors, by far Ukraine's most award-winning and symbolic film with a deep insight into the essence of our land, but also because he showed his colleagues the example of an unthinkable, absolutely boundless freedom much to the envy of modern artists who are now working in far more sterile conditions than Paradzhanov did.

Paradzhanov is now very much spoken and written about in a passionate, heart-breaking, and ponderous pitch. He is referred to as a genius, which is true, even though this downgraded epithet is now being applicable to all sorts of poseurs. He must have been a genius indeed, which is testified not only by his unique mature films such as Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Sayat-Nova, and The Legend of the Suram Fortress but also by his over-generous nature which always felt hemmed in among banal moral truths, preset artistic patterns, and the conventional wisdom. In fact, the very emergence and presence of such people in the world challenges the inextinguishable diktat that all be commonplace.

With this in view, let us discreetly hold back our pen before it spits out panegyric clichОs, at least because history teaches: there is no more reliable a method to destroy a unique genius than a blind posthumous glory - all this obtusely delightful eulogy, lines in pre-filtered memoirs, unbridled sweet mush, and deep sighs. God grant that the great Serhiy Paradzhanov, a dreamer and maximalist, a taboo-breaker and priest of beauty, should not be diminished in death. For he happened to know a thing or two about divine disdain and the precious cost of artistic freedom.