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
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.
In my films, I try to give people as little information as possible, which is still much more than what they get in real life. I feel that they should be grateful for the little bit of information I give them.
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.
Cinema gives you the opportunity to be both a grandparent and a grandchild whereas in life you cannot be both at the same time.
I spend a lot of time doing carpentry. Sometimes there is nothing that gives me the contentment that sawing a piece of wood does.
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 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.
Having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language.
Whether you consider me a master filmmaker or not, I do it with my intuition and my vision, my experience as a storyteller.