caption website death_date death_place children birth_place name birth_date spouse yearsactive image article_title birth_name restingplace occupation
sergei parajanov depicted on an armenian postal stamp -lsb- http://www.parajanov.com] 20 july 1990 yerevan , armenian ssr , soviet union suren parajanov tiflis , georgian ssr , soviet union sergei parajanov 9 january 1924 nigyar -lrb- 1956 -- 1962 -rrb- kerimova -lrb- 1950 -- 1951 -rrb- svetlana tscherbatiuk 1951 -- 1990 225px sergei parajanov
 sarkis hovsepi parajaniants komitas pantheon , yerevan director , screenwriter , art director , production designer
sergei parajanov

sergei parajanov -lrb- ; ; ; ; sometimes spelled paradzhanov or paradjanov ; january 9 , 1924 -- july 20 , 1990 -rrb- was an armenian film director and artist from the soviet union who made significant contributions to ukrainian , armenian and georgian cinema .
he invented his own cinematic style , which was totally out of step with the guiding principles of socialist realism -lrb- the only sanctioned art style in the ussr -rrb- .
this , combined with his controversial lifestyle and behaviour , led soviet authorities to repeatedly persecute and imprison him , and suppress his films .
although he started professional film-making in 1954 , parajanov later disowned all the films he made before 1965 as `` garbage '' .
after directing `` shadows of forgotten ancestors '' -lrb- renamed `` wild horses of fire '' for most foreign distributions -rrb- parajanov became something of an international celebrity and simultaneously a target of attacks from the system .
nearly all of his film projects and plans from 1965 to 1973 were banned , scrapped or closed by the soviet film administrations , both local -lrb- in kyiv and yerevan -rrb- and federal -lrb- goskino -rrb- , almost without discussion , until he was finally arrested in late 1973 on charges of rape , homosexuality and bribery .
he was imprisoned until 1977 , despite a plethora of pleas for pardon from various artists .
even after his release -lrb- he was arrested for the third and last time in 1982 -rrb- he was a `` persona non grata '' in soviet cinema .
it was not until the mid-1980s , when the political climate started to relax , that he could resume directing .
still , it required the help of influential georgian actor dodo abashidze and other friends to have his last feature films greenlighted .
his health seriously weakened by four years in labor camps and nine months in prison in tbilisi , parajanov died of lung cancer in 1990 , at a time when , after almost 20 years of suppression , his films were being featured at foreign film festivals .
`` everyone knows that i have three motherlands .
i was born in georgia , worked in ukraine and i 'm going to die in armenia . ''
- sergei parajanov , 1988 .
sergei parajanov is buried at komitas pantheon which is located in the city center of yerevan .
