Queering socialist realism: Serhii Paradzhanov’s early Ukrainian films and his transition to poetic cinema | Kino 2025

Sergei Paradzhanov, 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 December 17, 1973, Paradzhanov was arrested in Kyiv and subsequently sentenced to five years in a strict labor camp on charges of homosexuality and dissemination of pornography. Paradzhanov’s arrest coincided with a broader crackdown on Ukrainian dissident artists and intellectuals. This lecture will examine the political context surrounding Paradzhanov’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, Paradzhanov 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 Paradzhanov 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 Paradzhanov inadvertently subverted the canons of socialist realism and planted the seeds of his future poetic style. This lecture will explore these early films—Paradzhanov before he became ‘Paradzhanov’—to trace the development of his unique cinematic vision.

Olha Briukhovetska, PhD, specialises in film theory and visual culture, with a current research focus on Ukrainian poetic cinema. At present, she is serving as a guest researcher at the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany.

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