harpy:

Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov by unknown photographer.

My dad told me today the story of their meeting:

Tarkovsky had announced his arrival by telephone just on the day Parajanov’s rooms were being renovated. Parajanov paid great attention to the manner in which he received in his home people for whom he felt particular esteem and sympathy. And receiving guests in general — just like making films or preparing collages — was for him the sort of undertaking that required both a physical effort as well as an effort of imagination. Not only because he always wanted to “prepare the table” in a special way depending on the occasion and the time of the year (and there was always a touch of poetry in this “preparing the table”); but also because receiving guests as he saw it was a kind of theatre of which he was the director and the main actor. But that was no spectacle for its own sake, there was always a hidden thought behind it.

Parajanov had many friends in many circles and as there happened to be a circus across the street from his home, he became friends with the wild animal trainer there. With his empty rooms and no furniture yet desiring to set up an appropriate “dressing” for the meeting with Andrei Tarkovsky, Parajanov asked the trainer to bring over several sacks of sawdust and a pony. […]

So this was the scenery: an almost empty room, walls freshly painted white, the sawdust on the floor, the live pony tied to the radiator. The host had covered the oak table with white French lace from Chantilly and he put on top a silver cup he named “Potocki’s chalice”. And here he is pouring red wine from a very old Georgian bottle into “Potocki’s chalice”. Tarkovsky enters. Parajanov lifts his gaze but he doesn’t stop pouring the wine which overflows and begins to spread in a red stain over the white sheet. “Sergei Iosifovich, what are you doing?!”, cries Tarkovsky, “You’ve ruined the tablecloth!” “Yes I know”, Paradjanov answers, “but you are dearer to me than the tablecloth from Chantilly”.

(via swintons)