New perspectives on the Parajanov affair: The role of Italian activism in the transnational campaign for his release

Abstract

This article seeks to reconstruct the 1974-1977 transnational solidarity campaign in support of the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Parajanov, who was arrested in Kiev in late 1973 on charges of homosexual relations and sentenced to five years in prison. The mobilization for Parajanov’s release raises various research questions that one can summarize as follows: Why and how was that campaign able to mobilize Western players coming from different milieux and countries? The author argues that the “Parajanov affair” may allow us to understand the extent to which the topic of homosexuality in the USSR in the 1970s represented a strand of a broader transnational framework in which sexual identity, human rights, artistic expression and even Italian political issues intersected. The author investigates the role played by some Italian actors in this campaign and in the process leading to Parajanov’s release. More generally, the Parajanov affair embodies the struggle for the freedom of artistic creativity, political thinking and sexual identity, all elements of the broader activism of the period.