Culture
"I was accused of raping 340 members of the CPSU,” Parajanov was joking. Today is his 100th birthday
A hundred years ago, on January 9, 1924, a boy, Sargis (Sergei) Parajanov, was born in an Armenian family in Tiflis. He was destined to make several films recognized as masterpieces, to spend part of his life years in a Soviet prison, to survive there in harsh conditions and to become one of the greatest film directors of the 20th century.
"I was accused of raping 340 members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union," Parajanov joked in his interviews after his release from Soviet prison. World culture figures sent petitions for him. On charges of homosexuality, in 1974 he was sentenced to five years of strict regime colony with confiscation of personal property.
Parajanov was a man of peace. His house on Kote Meskhi Street in Tbilisi, which resembled a museum and an antique shop at the same time, was visited by world celebrities, including Marcello Mastroianni, Tonino Guerra, Andrei Tarkovsky, Vladimir Vysotsky and Marina Vladi.
