In the film Bobo by Nariné Mkrtchian and Arsen Azatian, which is also included in the festival programme, Paradzhanov talks about the lasting impression which the city of Rotterdam has made on him. He told an anecdote about seagulls which fed on the cheese he hung out of the hotel window; they continued to swoop past his window throughout his stay. In many of the conversations which he had with reporters in Rotterdam that year, he added that the seagulls and the city with the port of Rotterdam reminded him of one of the most beautiful films he had every seen: Seagulls Die in the Harbour.îIt may surprise one to know that Paradzhanov knew this minor Belgian low-budget film, but a statement by one of its makers, Rik Kuypers, may help to explain: ‘In Russia it was quite a success. It was considered there to be an exotic film. And the women at the windows in our old Antwerp streets was something they never got to see in a Russian film. People also detected an anti-American tone in the film.’ It can’t have been the anti-American element which interested Paradzhanov, but the film was quite different from what was made in the Soviet Union in the fifties. Seagulls Die in the Harbour has been praised for its sultry atmosphere and striking black & white photography. Paradzhanov probably felt a kind of mental affinity. Roland Verhavert: ‘I want to show the most cruel things in a world of the greatest possible beauty (…), people who kill each other in rose beds, things like that.’
