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Ashik Kerib Clip from Benjamin Hayden on Vimeo.

From the Archives - Painting with Cinema: A Biographical Glimpse of Sergei Panajorov and Ashik Kerib

By: Benjamin Hayden

January 17, 2010

Walking in a museum, you come across a painting. Stopping to observe its qualities, a story begins to unfold at you. You cannot look away. The composition is intended, the colors are vibrant, you see sitars, peacocks, merchants, and decadence. An eerie world exists within the frame of this painting. Some artists paint with brushes, but Georgian filmmaker Sergei Panajorov paints with the camera-brush.

Panajorov does not require an introduction to contextualize his greatness because his films speak for themselves. Panajorov’s films may be anthropomorphized because it is as if they are living whether you witness them or keep them on your shelf.

An introduction will be provided for the purpose of framing Panajorov, who composes glimpses of forgotten worlds. This is because Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, and myself wish that you and everyone can witness Panajorov’s splendid cinematic excellence.

Panajorov filmed in the Mediterranean, he won twenty-three gold medals for his films, and was imprisoned for five years and eleven days in a maximum-security Soviet prison. At the time of his filmmaking career, the Soviet’s saw his films as surrealist, which was considered to invite opposition to the state. While imprisoned, he was concerned with developing pathology, and took up painting. Perhaps this offers an explanation to how the film in question is so vivid in its composition that the shots look like moving painting, rather than scenes.

He made eight films in the Ukraine, and was imprisoned before creating his final masterpiece, his magnum opus, Askik Kerib. By my analysis, Askik Kerib is a film that brings the viewer into the world of the painting, and is about the world inside the painting that watches you.

From the opening credits, you are brought to an unfamiliar time and place. There is fifteenth-century-something credits with close-ups of ancient-looking pictures of Slavic people looking into the camera. This is a recurrent motif throughout the entire film.

Upon studying what others have said about the film, the film is also a very rich love story. Kerib, the protagonist, is a well-natured Askik, which is a mystic troubadour, or traveling bard. He falls in love the Magul-Megeri, the stunning daughter of a local rich brute. Ashik Kerib swears to her father to travel the world for seven full years and earn enough wealth prove himself a worthy husband for Magul-Megeri. If Ashik Kerib is unsuccessful, she is arranged to marry Kurshudbek.

Magul-Megeri utters a bone-chilling oath to Ashik Kerib, she pledges, “For a thousand days and nights I will wait for you”.

Without giving too much away, Ashik Kerib finds himself as a wealthy man, years later. He dresses decadently, eats the finest food, and is living contently with all his wishes granted. Meanwhile, back home, Magul-Megeri is fretful of his absence and is worried that Ashik Kerib has forgotten about her oath.

Will Ashik Kerib absolve himself of comfort and decadence to return for the hand of Magul-Megeri? Or will he fall victim to the riches that are as imprisoning as Panajorov’s five years and eleven days spent in prison?

Dramatically, Ashik Kerib is exaggerated, exuberant and expressive. It is like German expressionist acting on a more conscious level.

Technically, Panajorov achieves stunning moments of cinematographic excellence, which are intriguingly lost in the age of film, now commandeered by digital compositing. There is an instance of multi-layered deep focus where the bare back of a strong man’s neck is centered and a horseman riding across a bridge fifty meters away, both are in crisp focus. Calculated superimposition is this reviewer’s best guess at how Panajorov achieved this effect.

There is a spatial concept in the composition of a Muslim-style arch-door-way where one meter deeper inside is a flame, burning in a darkly lit room. The spatial mise-en-scene of foreground, mid-ground, and sub-mid-ground, with no background, is perfectly aligned in the shot’s composition.

Panajorov successfully meshes a classic expressionistic style of action with an ancient classical historical period in Georgian history.

Stepping outside the film, Panajorov spent a lot of time in his bathroom singing arias. He was sent to study at ballet school, he was also a singer, he sang Italian and Ukrainian songs. He played violin, graduated from ballet school, was a vocalist, and finally sent to study at VGIK Cinematography school. This shows that Panajorov’s middle-class upbringing is nothing extraordinary to lead his to production of a marvelous work of cinema. His imagination simply begets his art form.

Lastly, a quote from Panajorov himself: “If you are able to record life, if you are able to observe it and, grasping the truth, generalize it philosophically, then it’s directing…They always say it’s invention, I say: “No! it’s the truth I thought up!” What do you think: is it my invention, or is it truth?”

In the end, I sincerely invite you watch Ashik Kerib by auteur Sergei Panajorov’s films.

Written by :

brhayden

 

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