‘Queering Socialist Realism: Serhii Parajanov’s early Ukrainian films and his transition to poetic cinema’ with Olha Briukhovetska | Kino 2026
Date and time:
Tuesday 17 March, 2026
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
ONLINE
Sergei Parajanov, director of the internationally acclaimed film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965), which established the Ukrainian school of poetic cinema, was one of the most innovative and persecuted figures in post-war cinema. On 17 December, 1973, Parajanov was arrested in Kyiv and subsequently sentenced to five years in a strict labor camp on charges of homosexuality and dissemination of pornography. Parajanov’s arrest coincided with a broader crackdown on Ukrainian dissident artists and intellectuals. This lecture will examine the political context surrounding Parajanov’s arrest and explore the potential connections between his sexual, political, and artistic dissidence, with a particular focus on his Ukrainian period.
During his time in Kyiv, Parajanov completed five full-length feature films, with only the last, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, marking his creative breakthrough. Prior to this, his early works were generally considered unsuccessful, a sentiment shared by Parajanov himself. While these films were intended to conform to standard socialist realist genres such as collective farm musicals, war dramas, and anti-religious satires, they failed to convey the expected ideological messages convincingly. However, rather than mere failures, these early works can be viewed as positioned at an ‘oblique angle to what coheres’, to quote Sara Ahmed.They invite closer examination, particularly through a queer lens, to uncover how Parajanov inadvertently subverted the canon of socialist realism and planted the seeds of his future poetic style. This lecture will explore these early films—Parajanov before he became ‘Parajanov’—to trace the development of his unique cinematic vision.
£35 general £25 student Friends and Benefactors of the Institute are also eligible for a discount.
Lecturer
Olha Briukhovetska
Olha Briukhovetska, PhD, specialises in film theory and visual culture, with a current research focus on the cinema of Sergei Parajanov, particularly his Ukrainian period. Her work is published in both Ukrainian and English, appearing in notable publications such as Apparatus: Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as KinoKultura, Art-It, Red Thread, Frieze, and L’Internationale. Briukhovetska has been a Professor of Cultural Studies at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine since 2007. At present, she teaches at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and serves as a guest researcher at the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany.
