The footage in this comes from Sergei Parajanov's 1968 film Sayat Nova or The Color of Pomegranates. This copy was salvaged from MTV's AMP. A bunch of the imagery in this film has appeared in various mainstream MTV videos.

vimeo.com

         

wow. unbelievable.

I almost want to see the movie now but apparently it's all imagery. Those crazy Soviets and their planned economy!

         

Yeah, there's no dialogue in the film, and no camera movement either.

         

Not sure what you mean Captainmarc, but Parajanov and the Soviets were not on good terms, to say the least. He was imprisoned by them, as his genius films were considered too weird and deviant. He himself was Armenian. One of the great filmmakers. Obscure. But not to savvy music video directors who make their careers on stuff like that. Know your history and films! All that shit comes from somewhere -- even Parajanov was recycling from religious Armenian iconography.

         

I've always loved this vid & song, and most all Juno Reactor stuff. Thanks for the info on the visuals. The male narration is Chuck Heston from some biblical epic, though, yes?

         

cool! some great bulgarian folklore in it...

         

scott: Yep, Mr. Ten Commandments himself.

         

cheers kev. just handed in a treatment with 'colour of pomegranates' written all over it. Now I'm going to go from looking like someone who had some good, obscure knowledge into a cowboy copyist!
Superb!

btw. when I watched the film about 6 years ago I watched the first 20 or so minutes stunned... I had never seen anything like it before. Then I started to laugh. I had to turn it off after I stopped taking it seriously. Couldn't unlock the meaning, and ended up looking pretentious for it.

         

Sorry ;) Obscurity is my specialty, I think. Anything that takes something from this film is probably worth seeing, so I hope you get hired.

         

Juno Reactor vim