Abbas Kiarostami: Articles & Interviews

Abbas Kiarostami - Articles & Interviews

Interviews

AK: "I get my material from around me. When I leave my house in the morning, those are the people I come into contact with. In my entire life I've never met a star-somebody I've seen on the screen..."
-from "Human beings and their problems are the most important raw material for any film", Interview with David Walsh
AK: "Gabriel Garcia Marquez once said: 'I don't choose a subject; it's the subject that chooses me'. The same goes for me. The subject depends on whatever happens to be keeping me awake at night..."
- from An Interview with Kiarostami by Hushang Golmakani
AK: "I suppose, once a film is made, its creator should get detached and try to step back and look at it in a way just like any other spectator sees it..."
- from A Debate with Abbas Kiarostami, Iranian Movie Director Film International, NetIran

Articles

"Much of what's been called innovative in the art of movies over the past half century has at first been seen by part of the audience as boring or as representing a loss--usually because it has somehow redefined the shape and function of narrative..."
- from Fill In The Blanks, by Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
TEHERAN, Iran -- when the 1997 Cannes film Festival awarded the Palme d'Or, its highest honor, to Abbas Kiarostami's "Taste of Cherry" on its closing evening in May, the audience's acclamation had an extra edge of electricity. Two days before...
-from The Iranian Who Won the World's Attention by Godfrey Cheshire, The New York Times, September 28, 1997
"Some years the festivals, try as they may, have no masterworks to offer. This year's New York Film Festival was fortunate enough to be graced by two humanist masterpieces that should immediately join the canon of enduring cinema: Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry and Fred Wiseman's Public Housing..."
- from The New York Film Festival by Philip Lopate
"It was the rare survey response that did not list at least one film by Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, and many participants, obviously frustrated by the limitation of choosing a single work by him, selected two or more..."
-from Director of the Decade: Abbas Kiarostami
"The appearance of a film by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami is a major international cultural event..."
-from Despair, hope, life, Review of Taste of Cherry by David Walsh, April 11, 1998

Iranian Cinema

Along with China, Iran has been lauded as one of the exporters of great cinema in the nineties. The history of film production in Iran, however, dates back to early 1930s when a few silent comedies added a domestic flavor to a film menu that had featured foreign films for thirty years.
-from Sixty Six Years of Film Production in Iran by Dr. Jamsheed Akrami
For Americans who want to look beyond the reductive image of Iran presented by the US media, Iran's cinema offers an alternative that is fascinating, even astonishing, for its artistic sophistication and passionate humanism.
-from The Iranian Cinema by Godfrey Cheshire

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