Tini zabutykh predkiv 1965

Stephen Holden, New York Times: There are hallucinatory sequences in Sergei Paradzhanov's 1964 film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors when this eruptively colorful movie feels more like a folkloric tapestry sprung to life than a film about flesh-and-blood people. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Sergei Paradjanov's extraordinary merging of myth, history, poetry, ethnography, dance, and ritual... remains one of the supreme works of the Soviet sound cinema, and even subsequent Paradjanov features have failed to dim its intoxicating splendors. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: It's one of the most unusual films I've seen, a barrage of images, music and noises, shot with such an active camera we almost need seatbelts. Read more

John Patterson, L.A. Weekly: Shadows was a leap in the dark like none other in Soviet film history, and a slap in the face of the officially sanctioned and artistically vacuous school of Socialist Realism. Read more

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is one of those rare films that look totally fresh and uncorrupted -- as if the director hadn't pilfered a thing from other film makers but had simply discovered the camera, and how best to use it, by himself. Read more

Time Out: The athletic camerawork and the bizarre visual effects take their tone from the folk ballads that recur on the soundtrack, sometimes touching an authentically barbaric or tragic poetry. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: In this overwhelmingly beautiful movie, a sad, short, brutalized life is elevated to ecstatic myth. Read more