Armenian Soviet director. Graduated from VGIK (All-Union State Cinema Institute), where he studied with Igor Savchenko, and made a number of Ukranian-language films, which he described as "justified failures". He first achieved international recognition with Teni zabytykh predkov / Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1965). All his subsequent films were infused with the spirit of folklore and ethnography: Sayat Nova, also known as Tsvet granata / The Colour of Pomegranates (1969), Legenda o Suramskoi kreposti / The Legend of Suram Fortress (1984), and Ashik Kerib (1988). In 1974, because of his heterodoxy, all his film projects were blocked and he was imprisoned on various trumped-up charges and released in 1978 only after an international protest campaign. Describing cinema as a "synthetic art", he developed Sergei Eisenstein's concepts, using colour, rhythm, music, dancing and montage to move away from plot-constrained structures.