A playful boy heads for home after buying bread, only to find out the road is blocked by a frightening stray dog. As no passerby stops to offer assistance, it finally occurs to the boy to be friend the dog by throwing it a piece of bread. Kiarostami’s first film is a wordless, bittersweet classic. 1970, b&w, 10 minutes.Read More »
This banned and rarely seen pseudo-documentary by Kiarostami is a testimony to his seldom acknowledged political shrewdness and his objective, complex perspective on the tumultuous events of the late 70s in Iran, culminating in the revolution. Remarkably, he achieved this without leaving his comfort zone, the classroom setting, and by staying faithful to his inquiring style, with its subtle, imaginative manipulation of recorded reality. Here, he also introduced the interview format into his body of work, putting his finger on the pulse of Iranian society by collaging conflicting viewpoints.Read More »
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A deaf old man wearing a hearing aid is walking in the streets of Rasht. When the surroundings get too noisy, he turns off his sound. Unfortunately, when he returns home, he doesn’t hear his granddaughter, home from school, vainly ringing the doorbell. A chorus of children gathers to penetrate the old man’s silence.Read More »
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A boy on his way home from school kicks a ball out of street where some children are playing. He is cased and forced to take a new and much longer way home.Read More »
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Abbas Kiarostami, director of such somber films as Taste Of Cherry, is the last person one would suspect of dabbling in goofy formalist instructional movies. Nevertheless, that’s what he does here. A color is brought up – red, for example. Then various red things are shown, starting with that which is found in nature and going from there. And so on for various colors. Also, a boy with a pistol shoots different colored bottles of water and the same boy is the last survivor of a car chase. This is rather inconsequential but fun – like Seseme Street for simpleminded adults.Read More »
A Separation (Persian: جدایی نادر از سیمین, translit. Jodái-e Náder az Simin) is a 2011 Iranian drama film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, starring Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat and Sarina Farhadi. It focuses on an Iranian middle-class couple who separate, and the intrigues which follow when the husband hires a lower-class caretaker for his elderly father. The film received the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bears for Best Actress and Best Actor at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the first Iranian film to win the Golden Bear. The film is the official Iranian candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.Read More »
Description: This documentary by French director Jean-Pierre Limosin is the first Spanish edition of the renowned “Cinéma, de notre temps” series. In this episode, Abbas Kiarostami talks about his life and work. Summarising his approach to filmaking, Kiarostami said:
“A filmmaker has to be conscious about his responsibility. I always wish to remind the audience that they are watching a film. You see, it is very dangerous to make the audience more emotionally engaged than they need to be. In the darkness of the cinema, people are so innocent. It makes them feel that everything is closer and stronger. That is why we should not make them even more emotional: People need to think when they watch films, not to be robbed of their reason … I make half movies. The rest is up to the audience to create for themselves.”Read More »