Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami; 22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer. An active film-maker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy, Close-Up, Taste of Cherry– which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year – and The Wind Will Carry Us. In his later works, Certified Copyand Like Someone in Love, he...
NationalityIranian
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth22 June 1940
The film [Close Up] made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn't directing the actors so much as being directed by them. So it was a very particular film.
I don't have very complete scripts for my films. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character who's in my mind in reality.
When we start shooting I don't have rehearsals with characters at all. So, rather than pulling them towards myself, I travel closer to them; it's very much closer to the real person than anything I try to create. So I give them something but I also take from them.
Children are very strong and independent characters and can come up with more interesting things than Marlon Brando, and it's sometimes very difficult to direct or order them to do something.
In my experience as a director, I think there is obviously something of the way men - maybe that's a common point with Shirin - the way men see women in the film, and the way these two characters see each other.
When I find the character, I try to spend time with them and get to know them very well. Therefore my notes are not from the character that I had in my mind before, but are instead based on the people I've met in real life.
Usually when I write a script, I have in mind some real people that I'm writing about, who don't always act in the film afterward.
Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them.
I think life is so difficult to catch, it's so furtive, that a copy, a film, can in no way catch it and represent it.
I was mentioning with the digital camera, maybe this new fashion of filmmaking gives a closer look of what life may be like. But it's still nothing but a copy.
I don't like reverse-angle shots - I find them very fake and very untruthful to the viewer.
This [the earthquake] was a very big influence on me, and the issue of life and death from then on does recur in my films.
My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.
People have curiosity, they have intelligence, they have interest in understanding their peers. But producers and directors of cinema have decided that the seats in the theaters have been made to transform people's minds to lazy minds.