Kivski Freski

I can see why production was stopped. Looks like an exploration/caricature of Soviet-Ukraine national-cultural identity.

Kind of impressive collection of arty-type shots from a movie that was never made (score is therefore meaningless). Makes some good use of the dancers hired for the thing.

Kivski Freski is an early Parajanov experiment with tableux and pantomine that would later define his career. It is basically trial footage from a project banned by state authorities. As a result, it's a difficult work to judge because it's incomplete, even in short form. It's worth a look for devotees of his style who are curious to glimpse it in its early embryonic stage, before he mastered it with The Color of Pomegranates and never topped it.

Sadly missing the intended context and therefore impossible to rate fairly. More like an indirect document of the absurd creative repression Soviet Union suffered from. The project itself looks weird and wonderful.

Seria um filmaço

Kiev Frescos should not be judged as a complete short film or an "exercise". It was assembled from the trial footage that survived after the Soviet regime banned an intended feature-length film pre-production. It clearly does display the symbolistic and exoticist style that Parajanov would have had between Ancestors and Pomegranates, but there is little else to go on and one wonders what might have been.