As scholar Ian Christie writes in his liner essay on the film, Parajanov’s mature work draws upon “Ukrainian, Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani visual and musical culture” (the director himself was born in Georgia to Armenian parents). But in Pomegranates his inspirations also extend further east—hence its inclusion under the banner of LACMA’s Iranian-art exhibition. Much of the imagery flows out of the tradition of Persian miniature painting, which Parajanov first encountered in some of its nineteenth-century manifestations at the Georgian Art Museum in Tbilisi. And it wasn’t long before Pomegranates had in turn made its influence felt back in Iran: the film, which showed in Tehran in 1972, inspired many artists there to pay homage to Qajar-dynasty painting in their own work.

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