- Awards And Honors:
- Praemium Imperiale (2004)
- Notable Works:
- “ABC Africa”
- “Certified Copy”
- “Nan va kucheh”
- “Ten”
Abbas Kiarostami
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Who was Abbas Kiarostami?
Abbas Kiarostami was an acclaimed Iranian filmmaker, born on June 22, 1940, in Tehran. He was renowned for his innovative approach to filmmaking, consistently exploring the interplay between reality and fiction throughout his four-decade career.
Kiarostami's early work included directing advertisements and children's book illustrations before he established the film division at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. His directorial debut was the short film Bread and Alley (1970), which showcased elements that would become hallmarks of his style: improvised performances, documentary textures, and naturalistic rhythms.
He gained international recognition for films like the Koker trilogy (Where Is the Friend's Home?, And Life Goes On..., and Through the Olive Trees), which delved into the relationship between film and reality. His film Taste of Cherry (1997) shared the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival. Kiarostami passed away on July 4, 2016, in Paris.
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What is Abbas Kiarostami best known for?
Abbas Kiarostami, an Iranian filmmaker, is best known for his experimental approach to the boundaries between reality and fiction. Throughout his four-decade career, he explored themes of childhood, morality, and the intersection of film and life.
Kiarostami gained international acclaim for his Koker trilogy, which includes Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987), And Life Goes On… (1992), and Through the Olive Trees (1994). His film Close-Up (1990) also brought him significant recognition. He was a prominent figure in Iranian cinema, known for his quiet, contemplative style that often blended documentary elements with fictional narratives. His work frequently featured children as performers and central to the stories.
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What are some famous films directed by Abbas Kiarostami?
Abbas Kiarostami, an influential Iranian filmmaker, directed several critically acclaimed films that explored the intersection of reality and fiction. Among his notable works are the Koker trilogy, which includes Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987), And Life Goes On... (1992), and Through the Olive Trees (1994).
Kiarostami also directed Close-Up (1990), a docudrama based on a true story, and Taste of Cherry (1997), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival. Other significant films in his oeuvre include The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), Ten (2002), Certified Copy (2010), and Like Someone in Love (2012). His distinctive style often featured improvised performances, documentary elements, and a focus on real-life rhythms.
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What style or techniques did Kiarostami use in his movies?
Abbas Kiarostami was known for his experimental approach, often blurring the lines between reality and fiction. His techniques included improvised performances, documentary textures, and real-life rhythms, as seen in his early work like Bread and Alley. He frequently used car journeys as a motif and explored the overlap between films and reality, notably in his Koker trilogy and the film Close-Up. Kiarostami also embraced digital video, allowing for innovative filmmaking such as the 10-scene car-based narrative of Ten. His later work sometimes eschewed traditional narrative, focusing on visual elements and elliptical storytelling, as in The Wind Will Carry Us.
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How did Kiarostami's films reflect life in Iran?
Abbas Kiarostami's films often explored the lives of children and the complexities of Iranian society, blending reality and fiction. His works, such as the Koker trilogy (Where Is the Friend's Home?, And Life Goes On, and Through the Olive Trees), offered intimate portraits of ordinary people and their struggles. Films like Ten provided a cross-section of contemporary Iran through conversations within a car, reflecting diverse social dynamics. Kiarostami's distinctive style, characterized by contemplative pacing and a focus on everyday life, gained international acclaim and became emblematic of a new wave of Iranian cinema that emerged after the 1979 revolution.
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Why is Abbas Kiarostami considered an important filmmaker internationally?
Abbas Kiarostami is considered an important international filmmaker due to his innovative approach to cinema, which masterfully blurred the lines between reality and fiction. His work often featured improvised performances, documentary textures, and real-life rhythms, particularly evident in films like Bread and Alley and the Koker trilogy (Where Is the Friend's Home?, And Life Goes On..., and Through the Olive Trees). These films, along with Close-Up, brought him significant international acclaim. Kiarostami's distinctive style, characterized by contemplative narratives and a focus on children as performers, became a hallmark of Iranian cinema on the global stage. His films, such as the Palme d'Or winner Taste of Cherry, garnered numerous awards and solidified his reputation as a pioneering director.
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Abbas Kiarostami (born June 22, 1940, Tehrān, Iran—died July 4, 2016, Paris, France) was an Iranian filmmaker who was known for experimenting with the boundaries between reality and fiction throughout a four-decade career.
Kiarostami studied painting and graphic arts at the University of Tehrān and spent a period designing posters, illustrating children’s books, and directing advertisements and film credit sequences. He was hired in 1969 by the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults to establish its film division. The institute produced his first film as a director, the lyrical short Nān va kūcheh (1970; Bread and Alley), which featured elements that would define his later work: improvised performances, documentary textures, and real-life rhythms. His first feature, Mosāfer (1974; The Traveler), about a rebellious village boy determined to go to Tehrān and watch a football (soccer) match, is an indelible portrait of a troubled adolescent. In the 1980s Kiarostami’s documentaries Avalihā (1984; First Graders) and Mashq-e shab (1989; Homework) offered further insight into the lives of Iranian schoolchildren.
In the Koker trilogy, named for the village where much of the trilogy takes place, Kiarostami moved from his traditional subject matter of the moral lives of children to explore the overlap between films and reality. In Khāneh-ye dūst kojāst? (1987; Where Is the Friend’s Home?), an eight-year-old boy must return his friend’s notebook, but he does not know where his friend lives. The second film, Zendegī va dīgar hich (1992; And Life Goes On…, or Life and Nothing More), follows the journey of the director (played by an actor) of Where Is the Friend’s Home? to Koker, damaged by a severe earthquake since the first film, to find the young boy who starred in that movie. And Life Goes On… was also the first of Kiarostami’s films centred around a car trip, a motif he would return to often in his career. The final film in the trilogy, Zīr-e darakhtān-e eyton (1994; Through the Olive Trees), is about an actor’s difficult romantic pursuit of a fellow actress during the filming of And Life Goes On…. During this period Kiarostami also made Namay-e nazdīk (1990; Close-Up), which tells the true story of a film buff who swindled an upper-class Tehrān family by pretending to be noted director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The film buff, the family, and Makhmalbaf all played themselves. The Koker trilogy and Close-Up brought Kiarostami international acclaim. His screenplay for Jafar Panahi’s Bādkonak-e sefīd (1995; The White Balloon), a look at life through the eyes of a seven-year-old girl, further increased his reputation.
In Taʿm-e gīlās (1997; Taste of Cherry), a man drives around the hills outside Tehrān trying to find someone who will bury him after he commits suicide. (The movie was banned in Iran for supposedly encouraging suicide.) Much of the film’s action unfolds in long scenes of conversation set in the protagonist’s car. Taste of Cherry shared the Palme d’Or with Imamura Shōhei’s Unagi (The Eel) at the 1997 Cannes film festival. Bād mā rā khāhad bord (1999; The Wind Will Carry Us) tells the story of an engineer who travels with a film crew to a remote mountain village to document a funeral ceremony. The film is told in an elliptical style, with many characters remaining offscreen entirely.
ABC Africa (2001) is a documentary about Ugandan orphans whose parents died of AIDS or were killed in the civil war, and it was the first of several features Kiarostami shot entirely by using digital video. With Dah (2002; Ten) Kiarostami took advantage of the creative freedom offered by lightweight digital video equipment to do a film of 10 scenes set entirely in the front seat of a car. A young divorced woman drives around Tehrān and has conversations with her son and a diverse group of women who form a cross section of contemporary Iran. Five Dedicated to Ozu (2003) is five scenes of a seashore shot without camera movement in a style inspired by that of Japanese director Ozu Yasujirō, and it began a period of Kiarostami’s work in which he made films that eschewed narrative. In Shīrīn (2008) members of an audience of women watch a film inspired by Neẓāmī’s romantic epic poem Khosrow o-Shīrīn (“Khosrow and Shīrīn”). The film consists, except for the credits, of close-ups of the women, and the film-within-the-film about Khosrow and Shīrīn is heard but never shown.
Copie conforme (2010; Certified Copy) was Kiarostami’s first narrative feature film since Ten and the first he shot outside Iran. In Tuscany a gallery owner (played by Juliette Binoche, who appeared in Shīrīn) invites an art historian (William Shimell) to tour the countryside with her. However, the true nature of their relationship is ambiguous in that sometimes they act as a long-married couple and sometimes they seem to have just met. Like Someone in Love (2012), which was shot in Japan, is about a young prostitute, her fiancé, and one of her clients, an elderly writer, and is another of Kiarostami’s films that features many driving scenes.
Kiarostami’s films garnered numerous awards throughout his career. In 2004 he received the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for theatre/film.
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