RESISTANCE IN COLOR
Friday, January 19, 2024 (7:30pm)
The DeLuxe Theater – 3303 Lyons Ave, Houston, TX 77020
$10 / Free for Aurora members
Artist Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili in attendance
Resistance in Color celebrates the centenary of one of the most colorful and revered figures in world cinema, Sergei Parajanov. Despite repeated censorship and persecution, Parajanov’s unique cinematic language, featured in masterpieces like The Color of Pomegranates (1969), has earned him worldwide recognition. This program will feature Parajanov’s rarely seen and recently restored short films Kyiv Frescoes (1966), Hakob Hovnatanyan (1967), and Arabesques on the Theme of Pirosmani (1985). Georgian-American artist and Parajanov’s goddaughter, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili will be in Houston to share her memories of the artist and present her new experimental shorts Flush (2022) and INTERIOR (2024). Continuing Prajanov’s legacy, Alexi-Meskhishvili uses color film to investigate themes of invisibility and collective resistance within Soviet and Post-Soviet spaces. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili.
The historic DeLuxe Theater is located in Houston’s 5th Ward at 3303 Lyons Avenue, with free parking available in the lot behind the theater at Gregg St. and New Orleans St.
Sergei Parajanov (1924–1990)
Affectionately known as the “magician of cinema,” Sergei Parajanov was a visual artist and filmmaker born to Armenian parents in Tbilisi, Georgia. Parajanov was widely celebrated during his lifetime, winning many awards at festivals in Venice, New York, Rotterdam, London, São Paulo, and Istanbul. He paid a heavy price for his outspoken criticism of Soviet cinema and was imprisoned three times. Most of his visual art works – assemblages, collages, drawings – were created during his imprisonment. The last feature Parajanov completed was Ashik Kerib (1988), which won the European Film Academy Award (European Director). Parajanov has been the subject of numerous retrospectives, including at The Museum of Modern Art, Harvard Film Archive, Mystetskyi Arsenal, Tbilisi History Museum, Odessa International Film Festival, and Arsenal Berlin.
Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili (b. 1979)
Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili is a Georgian-American artist living in Berlin. Homing in on porous boundaries between life and art Alexi-Meskhishvili melds the grotesque, humorous, beautiful, abject, feminine, and uncanny in ambivalent cohesion. Her recent solo exhibitions include Helena Anrather (2023), Galerie Molitor (2022), LC Queisser, Tbilisi (2022) galerie frank elbaz (2022), and Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Eglise des Frères Prêcheurs (2021). Selected group exhibitions include Bonner Kunstverein (2023), Museum für Photographie Braunschweig (2021), Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2019), and Kunst Haus Wien (2018). A large-scale public presentation of Alexi-Meskhishvili’s work was on view September 2022 through August 2023 at the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland.
Image: Sergei Parajanov, Arabesques on the Theme of Pirosmani, 1985. Courtesy of Georgian Film and Studio Mematiane.