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The Cinema Of Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami’s films have taken their place alongside the masterworks of world cinema. He remains the most influential filmmaker of post-revolutionary Iran and has produced a body of work that is as rooted in his native land as it is universal in appeal.
Respected cinema historian Alberto Elena uses Iranian sources wherever possible to frame Kiarostami’s oeuvre within the context of the rich artistic and intellectual Persian tradition that has nurtured the director. He examines his blending of fiction and reality, and his recurring themes of death, meaning in life, isolation, solidarity and the lives of women. The result is a retrospective that reveals exactly how this most Iranian of directors has come to assume a place in the pantheon of international cinema, from his early days as an illustrator and graphic designer, and his collaborative work and influences to his current master-status.
Alberto Elena teaches film history at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. The editor of Secuencias, Revista de Historia del Cine, he has organised various film retrospectives and participated as a member of the jury at different international film festivals. In addition to his contributions to numerous periodicals, his publications include Cine e Islam, Satyajit Ray, Ciencia, cine e historia: de Méliès a 2001 and The Cinema of Latin America.
Respected cinema historian Alberto Elena uses Iranian sources wherever possible to frame Kiarostami’s oeuvre within the context of the rich artistic and intellectual Persian tradition that has nurtured the director. He examines his blending of fiction and reality, and his recurring themes of death, meaning in life, isolation, solidarity and the lives of women. The result is a retrospective that reveals exactly how this most Iranian of directors has come to assume a place in the pantheon of international cinema, from his early days as an illustrator and graphic designer, and his collaborative work and influences to his current master-status.
Alberto Elena teaches film history at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. The editor of Secuencias, Revista de Historia del Cine, he has organised various film retrospectives and participated as a member of the jury at different international film festivals. In addition to his contributions to numerous periodicals, his publications include Cine e Islam, Satyajit Ray, Ciencia, cine e historia: de Méliès a 2001 and The Cinema of Latin America.
- GenresFilmIranNonfiction
297 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 24, 2020
We, as a humanity, didnt deserve Abbas Kiarostami.
June 23, 2020
It is a beautiful read. While it assimilates thoughts and contexts of and around K’s films, at the same time, it has its own unassuming humble stand on the subject.
The book relooks into almost all of K’s films, starting with the highly structured, pedagogical and moralistic (short) films that he made under the aegis of Kanun, an institutional association spanning for many many years in K's career. The films that he made amidst Iran’s political imbroglio and a spine breaking censorship regime include Bread & Alley, Breaktime, A suit for wedding, The Experience,The Traveller,The Toothache etc which were dedicatedly exploring the undeterred spirit of the child / adolescent protagonists who were on their own devices (on a journey of initiation and self discovery) and in the process, learnt something.
The book documents K’s growth as a film maker. His films are very much embedded in the cultural, social and political fabric of Iran and yet cannot be reduced to just those. The only constant that remained in his films were their ever transience, and their ever transcendence from the established forms and structures with their lyrical and poetical linguistics, their attempt at ‘re-educating the gaze’. K’s films were cinematic equivalent of the rich Persian poetry, something that he was besotted with. His frequent references to Khayyam, Hafeez, Rumi, Seferi, Farrokhzad etc through a symbolic iconography bear testimony.
During the Islamic Revolution of the 1979, ideological polarisation and repression had reached their height. Except the very safe and unquestioning entertainment films, cinema saw its dark times. K made films that depicted the ‘society as a metaphor for conflict’ like the Case No. 1, Case No. 2 , Orderly or Disorderly?, Fellow citizen, First Graders, Homework etc.
The Islamic revolution lead to a considerable liberalisation in Iran’s film making culture with the govt. extending subsidies and some more relaxation in the censorship norms. Besides K, other Iranian directors like Saless, Mejhrui, Naderi, Beyzai were also making distinguished films and have influenced K’s works in ways more than one. Though the banning regime continued, but K among others, made some brilliant films, films that unfolded layers of reality. The voyage of the child protagonist in Where is the Friend’s Home?, often oversimplified for an apparently simple narrative, unfolds an adult world hostile to children. The man , in Close Up, chasing his object of desire, the pursuit of which makes him alienated from the world . The undaunted human will to live and thrive, reduced to its primitive instincts in the face of an apocalypse in Life and Nothing More. A post apocalyptic couple exploring the nuances of their relationship in Through the Olive Trees, a film that dissolves boundaries between fiction and real. Taste of Cherry, heretic in its form and content , is often misunderstood for its uncertainty, an element that remains typically Kiarostamian.
With the democratisation of Iran in the early 1990s leading to the formation of the Khatami govt.,the latter promised to facilitate ‘dialogues between civilisations’, K’s international acclaim brought him a huge support from beyond the borders. Although his films have often been accused of being exclusively curated for the foreign film festivals , and have been pompously labelled as ‘humanistic’ (a label that K has time and again denied).
With every film, he went on an exploration of the ‘hic et nunc', of a reality, not in its puritanical sense, but one that questioned the Absolute truth. K , therefore, didn’t shy away from lies , in order to attempt at finding a greater truth. His austere film making style , a minimalism quite akin to the Persian tradition of miniature art, the Persian spiritual tradition, his continuous attempts at making films ‘without crew, camera’ i.e. the supposed essentials, his strict ethics of the image, his narrative obscurity all lend him a towering repute and yet K stands in his complete humility , on an expeditious self journey towards his love for films.
The author maintains in the end, Kiarostami’s films are above all about tolerance. A tolerance that doesn’t defy or belittle or declare anything, one that conserves traditions and yet remains open and humble to the unknown.
Highly highly recommended! I
The book relooks into almost all of K’s films, starting with the highly structured, pedagogical and moralistic (short) films that he made under the aegis of Kanun, an institutional association spanning for many many years in K's career. The films that he made amidst Iran’s political imbroglio and a spine breaking censorship regime include Bread & Alley, Breaktime, A suit for wedding, The Experience,The Traveller,The Toothache etc which were dedicatedly exploring the undeterred spirit of the child / adolescent protagonists who were on their own devices (on a journey of initiation and self discovery) and in the process, learnt something.
The book documents K’s growth as a film maker. His films are very much embedded in the cultural, social and political fabric of Iran and yet cannot be reduced to just those. The only constant that remained in his films were their ever transience, and their ever transcendence from the established forms and structures with their lyrical and poetical linguistics, their attempt at ‘re-educating the gaze’. K’s films were cinematic equivalent of the rich Persian poetry, something that he was besotted with. His frequent references to Khayyam, Hafeez, Rumi, Seferi, Farrokhzad etc through a symbolic iconography bear testimony.
During the Islamic Revolution of the 1979, ideological polarisation and repression had reached their height. Except the very safe and unquestioning entertainment films, cinema saw its dark times. K made films that depicted the ‘society as a metaphor for conflict’ like the Case No. 1, Case No. 2 , Orderly or Disorderly?, Fellow citizen, First Graders, Homework etc.
The Islamic revolution lead to a considerable liberalisation in Iran’s film making culture with the govt. extending subsidies and some more relaxation in the censorship norms. Besides K, other Iranian directors like Saless, Mejhrui, Naderi, Beyzai were also making distinguished films and have influenced K’s works in ways more than one. Though the banning regime continued, but K among others, made some brilliant films, films that unfolded layers of reality. The voyage of the child protagonist in Where is the Friend’s Home?, often oversimplified for an apparently simple narrative, unfolds an adult world hostile to children. The man , in Close Up, chasing his object of desire, the pursuit of which makes him alienated from the world . The undaunted human will to live and thrive, reduced to its primitive instincts in the face of an apocalypse in Life and Nothing More. A post apocalyptic couple exploring the nuances of their relationship in Through the Olive Trees, a film that dissolves boundaries between fiction and real. Taste of Cherry, heretic in its form and content , is often misunderstood for its uncertainty, an element that remains typically Kiarostamian.
With the democratisation of Iran in the early 1990s leading to the formation of the Khatami govt.,the latter promised to facilitate ‘dialogues between civilisations’, K’s international acclaim brought him a huge support from beyond the borders. Although his films have often been accused of being exclusively curated for the foreign film festivals , and have been pompously labelled as ‘humanistic’ (a label that K has time and again denied).
With every film, he went on an exploration of the ‘hic et nunc', of a reality, not in its puritanical sense, but one that questioned the Absolute truth. K , therefore, didn’t shy away from lies , in order to attempt at finding a greater truth. His austere film making style , a minimalism quite akin to the Persian tradition of miniature art, the Persian spiritual tradition, his continuous attempts at making films ‘without crew, camera’ i.e. the supposed essentials, his strict ethics of the image, his narrative obscurity all lend him a towering repute and yet K stands in his complete humility , on an expeditious self journey towards his love for films.
The author maintains in the end, Kiarostami’s films are above all about tolerance. A tolerance that doesn’t defy or belittle or declare anything, one that conserves traditions and yet remains open and humble to the unknown.
Highly highly recommended! I
March 3, 2021
" 'I regard sound as being very important, more essential than pictures,' says Kiarostami. A two-dimensional flat image is all you can achieve with your camera, whatever you may do. It's the sound that gives depth as the third dimension to that image. Sound, in fact, makes up for this shortcoming of pictures. Compare architecture and painting. The former deals with space while all you have in painting is surface.' " (36)
" 'The journey,' says Kiarostami, 'forms part of our culture, and it is linked with mysticism; for us what is really important is not the goal we wish to attain, but the path we must travel [to reach it].' " (75)
" Kiarostami maintains that his interest in the case was aroused above all by Sabzian's words reported in the Sorush article: 'Now I'm just a piece of meat and you can do whatever you like with me.' " (85)
" 'Film-making gives me this opportunity: to forget about reality sometimes, to break away from it and dream from time to time. And in my opinion, the audience has the same feelings at that moment, because they share the same desire to change reality.' " (113)
" 'Have you read Omar Khayyam? The quatrains of this Persian poet and great scientist, written at the end of the eleventh century and the early part of the twelfth, are a constant eulogy of life in the ever-present face of death. In my film, in the same way, we could just have talked about death and left out the idea of suicide.' " (130)
" 'The decision to die is the only prerogative left to man in the face of God or society's norms [...] This fundamental right to die gives rise to many other forms of freedom, achieved one by one.' " (135)
" 'I wanted to remind the spectators that this was really a film and that they shouldn't think about it as a reality. They should not become involved emotionally. This is much like some of our grandmothers who told us stories, some with happy endings and some with sad ones. But at the end they repeat a Persian saying which goes like this: "but after all, it is just a tale!"' " (139)
" 'I love looking at things. Looking in silence, particularly at nature. When you love someone, you take their picture: just look at family [photo] albums. Mine is full of photos of nature' "(160)
" 'A film never manages to reconstitute more than a part, of greater or lesser importance, of what it records. My greatest desire is to be able to make films one day with no cameras, no microphones, no crew.' " (173)
" And in a later interview, when he was asked whether he considered himself to be a realist director, he answered: 'No. And in fact I reject all the 'isms' en masse. Including the term 'humanism' that some people use about my films: the truth is that I think my films are not humanist at all.' " (185)
" 'I don't start with any theory in mind. I work in a completely instinctive way, and I wouldn't know how else to do it. But I am firmly convinced that today's film-maker must question himself about images, and not just produce them.' " (188)
" 'At times of conflict and anxiety, poetry is one of the few things that can give us a degree of certainty, provide us with a little happiness. I know of nothing apart from poetry that can do this. All through my life I have constantly taken refuge in poetry. In my opinion, poetry is much more helpful in times of difficulty than in times of calm; it enables us to find a certain stability, an internal energy.
When religion cannot fill this void, poetry can do so.' " (189)
" When he was asked recently whether he really thought that art should inspire in the spectator a desire to enter a different reality, Kiarostami replied emphatically: 'Yes, I believe so, because otherwise art would have no purpose. Should religion not prove successful at accomplishing that mission, art always can attempt it. They both point in the same direction. Religion points to another world, whereas art points to a better existence. One is an invitation, an offering to a faraway place, the other to a place that is close.'" (192)
" 'The journey,' says Kiarostami, 'forms part of our culture, and it is linked with mysticism; for us what is really important is not the goal we wish to attain, but the path we must travel [to reach it].' " (75)
" Kiarostami maintains that his interest in the case was aroused above all by Sabzian's words reported in the Sorush article: 'Now I'm just a piece of meat and you can do whatever you like with me.' " (85)
" 'Film-making gives me this opportunity: to forget about reality sometimes, to break away from it and dream from time to time. And in my opinion, the audience has the same feelings at that moment, because they share the same desire to change reality.' " (113)
" 'Have you read Omar Khayyam? The quatrains of this Persian poet and great scientist, written at the end of the eleventh century and the early part of the twelfth, are a constant eulogy of life in the ever-present face of death. In my film, in the same way, we could just have talked about death and left out the idea of suicide.' " (130)
" 'The decision to die is the only prerogative left to man in the face of God or society's norms [...] This fundamental right to die gives rise to many other forms of freedom, achieved one by one.' " (135)
" 'I wanted to remind the spectators that this was really a film and that they shouldn't think about it as a reality. They should not become involved emotionally. This is much like some of our grandmothers who told us stories, some with happy endings and some with sad ones. But at the end they repeat a Persian saying which goes like this: "but after all, it is just a tale!"' " (139)
" 'I love looking at things. Looking in silence, particularly at nature. When you love someone, you take their picture: just look at family [photo] albums. Mine is full of photos of nature' "(160)
" 'A film never manages to reconstitute more than a part, of greater or lesser importance, of what it records. My greatest desire is to be able to make films one day with no cameras, no microphones, no crew.' " (173)
" And in a later interview, when he was asked whether he considered himself to be a realist director, he answered: 'No. And in fact I reject all the 'isms' en masse. Including the term 'humanism' that some people use about my films: the truth is that I think my films are not humanist at all.' " (185)
" 'I don't start with any theory in mind. I work in a completely instinctive way, and I wouldn't know how else to do it. But I am firmly convinced that today's film-maker must question himself about images, and not just produce them.' " (188)
" 'At times of conflict and anxiety, poetry is one of the few things that can give us a degree of certainty, provide us with a little happiness. I know of nothing apart from poetry that can do this. All through my life I have constantly taken refuge in poetry. In my opinion, poetry is much more helpful in times of difficulty than in times of calm; it enables us to find a certain stability, an internal energy.
When religion cannot fill this void, poetry can do so.' " (189)
" When he was asked recently whether he really thought that art should inspire in the spectator a desire to enter a different reality, Kiarostami replied emphatically: 'Yes, I believe so, because otherwise art would have no purpose. Should religion not prove successful at accomplishing that mission, art always can attempt it. They both point in the same direction. Religion points to another world, whereas art points to a better existence. One is an invitation, an offering to a faraway place, the other to a place that is close.'" (192)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews