Film of which year?
Sir: Although I realise many of your cor- respondents maintain contempt for the ephemeral, I feel constrained to point out that your 'Film of the Year' (18 December), the albeit excellent Shadows of Our Forgot- ten Ancestors, is in fact more than ten years old. Possibly Mr Ackroyd's panel was con- fusing it with Sergei Paradjanov's more re- cent The Colour of Pomegranates, which was made in 1976, but only shown in this country for the first time this autumn, when it ran for a week at the ICA. Far be it from me to suggest that Mr Ackroyd's panel has seen neither film and simply handed the `award' to the first East European dissident that they could dredge from their memories. If this was the case however, it was discourteous to Paradjanov, who does have considerable difficulties with the Soviet authorities. Contempt for the film industry is one thing, but I have always understood that the ability to get and spell correctly the names of the protagonists of
one's copy was the essence of professional journalism.
W. A. Saunders
18 Dartmouth Park Avenue, London NW5
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