Tbilisi: Where cultures meet

It was perhaps only appropriate that the route for a return visit to an Azeri tea house run by ethnic Armenians in the old part of Tbilisi took us past a statue of the renowned ethnic Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov. Like other Armenian cultural icons such as Sayat Nova, an 18th century troubadour who wrote songs in Armenian, Georgian, Persian and especially Azerbaijani, Parajanov belonged more to the Caucasus than any one nation and it was perhaps for this reason that he remained in his native Tbilisi for most of his life. He moved to Yerevan just two years before his death in 1990.

Indeed, his last completed film was Ashik Kerib, an Azeri folk tale made even as troubles between Armenia and Azerbaijan descended into violence over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Effigies of the cult Armenian cultural icon, revered by international filmmakers such as Fellini, were even reportedly burnt during the Karabakh movement’s demonstrations in Yerevan according to peace activists such as Georgy Vanyan. Today, of course, few Armenians remember the controversy over Parajanov’s work in Azerbaijan or even know of the films he made in Georgian, Azeri and Ukrainian.

Even fewer people in Azerbaijan know about him or Sayat Nova at all, especially in an environment where the portrayal of Armenians is arguably more negative than that of Azerbaijan by the Armenian media. For most outsiders, however, the media in both countries tend to equally concentrate on the negative rather than the positive or even neutral.

The full post is available on Transitions Online’s Steady State.