Abbas Kiarostami, often hailed as Iran’s greatest filmmaker, whose searching, parable-like dramas of ordinary people and their problems reflected a poetic vision and a philosophical turn of mind, died on Monday in Paris. He was 76.
Iran’s official news agency, which confirmed the death, said he had traveled there to receive treatment for cancer after undergoing surgery in Tehran.
Mr. Kiarostami, loosely associated with the Iranian New Wave of the late 1960s, started out making short films about childhood problems for the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, where he had established a filmmaking division. He often worked in a semidocumentary style, and used nonprofessional actors, from whom he coaxed extraordinary performances.
“At the beginning it was just a job, but it was the making of me as an artist,” he told The Guardian in 2005. “The important thing is that I didn’t work in commercial films. I look at these 20 years as the best period of my professional life.”
He remained in Iran after the 1979 revolution and, never a political filmmaker, largely managed to work around the artistic obstacles thrown up by the new regime.
He began attracting notice outside Iran with the feature film “Where Is the Friend’s House?” (1987), about a conscientious schoolboy determined to return a friend’s notebook to keep him from being expelled. Told from its young hero’s point of view, it placed the boy’s small story in the social context of rural Iran, with sweeping shots of the landscape.
This was the first installment in the three films called the Koker trilogy, set in the village of that name in northern Iran, rocked by a devastating earthquake that struck in 1990.
Drawn back to the area, Mr. Kiarostami made two films dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy, “And Life Goes On” (1992) and “Through the Olive Trees” (1994), that marked him as a major talent in world cinema whose profoundly rooted realism and compassion drew comparisons to Vittorio De Sica and the Indian director Satyajit Ray.
In his 1997 film, “Taste of Cherry,” he told the story of a well-to-do man, identified only as Mr. Badii, who, determined to commit suicide, accosts a variety of characters as he looks for a volunteer to bury him. Its acute presentation of moral issues and personal crisis, reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman, deeply impressed critics.In his 1997 film, “Taste of Cherry,” he told the story of a well-to-do man, identified only as Mr. Badii, who, determined to commit suicide, accosts a variety of characters as he looks for a volunteer to bury him. Its acute presentation of moral issues and personal crisis, reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman, deeply impressed critics.
The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
“These are real issues that all of us in our own way face in our own lives, and so rarely are they treated on film: the sense of crying out to others, of needing others, of trying to create a bridge to others,” Richard Peña, the program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center at the time, said in 1997, when the film was shown at the New York Film Festival.
Abbas Kiarostami was born on June 22, 1940, in Tehran, where his father was a painter and decorator. After winning a painting contest at 18, Mr. Kiarostami enrolled in the School of Fine Arts at Tehran University, working as a traffic policeman to support himself. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1968.The next year he married Parvin Amir-Gholi. The marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by their two sons, Ahmad and Bahman.
At the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, Mr. Kiarostami made his first film in 1970. In neorealist style, “The Bread and Alley,” just 12 minutes long, told the story of a young boy’s confrontation with a vicious dog. In 1977 Mr. Kiarostami made his first feature-length film, “Report,” about a tax collector who takes bribes.
While he was filming “First Case, Second Case,” a documentary about a teacher who collectively punishes a class when one pupil refuses to admit wrongdoing, the Iranian revolution broke out. He had to completely rethink the film, which nevertheless managed to offend the new regime and was never released.
Unlike many other artists, Mr. Kiarostami chose to remain in Iran.
“When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit,” he told The Guardian. “And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. This is a rule of nature. I think if I had left my country, I would be the same as the tree.”
When he began receiving critical praise in the West, he ran into problems with the Iranian authorities, who often made it difficult for his films to be shown. Conversely, after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, stringent new visa requirements made it impossible for him to attend the premiere of his new film, “Ten,” at the New York Film Festival in 2002.
Mr. Kiarostami, always an idiosyncratic filmmaker, became increasingly experimental in his later work. “The Wind Will Carry Us” (1999), winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival, chronicled a sad engineer’s journey to a Kurdish village, relying on multiple characters whose voices are heard but who never appear on camera.
“Five” (2003) had neither character, plot nor dialogue, consisting of long landscape scenes filmed with a hand-held camera. In “Ten” Mr. Kiarostami disappeared as a director, mounting a digital video camera on the dashboard of a car and letting it film the driver as she traveled around Tehran, engaging in conversations with 10 different passengers.
“Five” (2003) had neither character, plot nor dialogue, consisting of long landscape scenes filmed with a hand-held camera. In “Ten” Mr. Kiarostami disappeared as a director, mounting a digital video camera on the dashboard of a car and letting it film the driver as she traveled around Tehran, engaging in conversations with 10 different passengers.
In 2010 he made his first film outside Iran, “Certified Copy.” Filmed in Tuscany, it offered a cryptic account of an encounter between a French antiques dealer, played by Juliette Binoche, and a British writer, played by the opera singer William Shimell. His final film, “Like Someone in Love” (2012), filmed in Japan, was an elliptical study of identity, its main characters a Japanese student moonlighting as a prostitute and her elderly client.
“At a time of war and isolation, when the whole world thought we are a warmongering country, Kiarostami showed another, peaceful face of Iran,” the professor and journalist Mehrdad Hodjati said in an interview. “He is an icon of change in Iran.”
____________________________________________________
Abbas Kiarostami (Persian: عباس کیارستمی 
pronunciation (help·info);[1] 22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer.[2][3][4] 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 (1987–94), Close-Up (1990), Taste of Cherry (1997) – which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year – and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999). In his later works, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively.
pronunciation (help·info);[1] 22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer.[2][3][4] 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 (1987–94), Close-Up (1990), Taste of Cherry (1997) – which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year – and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999). In his later works, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively.
Kiarostami had worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, art director and producer and had designed credit titles and publicity material. He was also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer. He was part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and includes pioneering directors such as Masoud Kimiai, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Dariush Mehrjui, Bahram Beyzai, Nasser Taghvai and Parviz Kimiavi. These filmmakers share many common techniques including the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues.[5]
Kiarostami had a reputation for using child protagonists, for documentary-style narrative films,[6] for stories that take place in rural villages, and for conversations that unfold inside cars, using stationary mounted cameras. He is also known for his use of Persian poetry in the dialogue, titles, and themes of his films. Kiarostami's films contain a notable degree of ambiguity, an unusual mixture of simplicity and complexity, and often a mix of fictional and documentary elements. The concepts of change and continuity, in addition to the themes of life and death, play a major role in Kiarostami's works.
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[hide]Early life and background[edit]
Kiarostami was born in Tehran. His first artistic experience was painting, which he continued into his late teens, winning a painting competition at the age of 18 shortly before he left home to study at the University of Tehran School of Fine Arts.[7] He majored in painting and graphic design, and supported his studies by working as a traffic policeman.[citation needed]
As a painter, designer, and illustrator, Kiarostami worked in advertising in the 1960s, designing posters and creating commercials. Between 1962 and 1966, he shot around 150 advertisements for Iranian television. In the late 1960s, he began creating credit titles for films (including Gheysar by Masoud Kimiai) and illustrating children's books.[7][8]
Film career[edit]
See also: Abbas Kiarostami filmography
1970s[edit]
In 1969, when the Iranian New Wave began with Dariush Mehrjui's film Gāv, Kiarostami helped set up a filmmaking department at the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanun) in Tehran. Its debut production and Kiarostami's first film was the twelve-minute The Bread and Alley (1970), a neo-realistic short film about a schoolboy's confrontation with an aggressive dog. Breaktime followed in 1972. The department became one of Iran's most noted film studios, producing not only Kiarostami's films, but acclaimed Persian films such as The Runner and Bashu, the Little Stranger.[7]
In the 1970s, Kiarostami pursued an individualistic style of film making.[9] When discussing his first film, he stated:
Following The Experience (1973), Kiarostami released The Traveler (Mossafer) in 1974. The Traveler tells the story of Qassem Julayi, a troubled and troublesome boy from a small Iranian city. Intent on attending a football match in far-off Tehran, he scams his friends and neighbors to raise money, and journeys to the stadium in time for the game, only to meet with an ironic twist of fate. In addressing the boy's determination to reach his goal, alongside his indifference to the effects of his amoral actions, the film examined human behavior and the balance of right and wrong. It furthered Kiarostami's reputation for realism, diegetic simplicity, and stylistic complexity, as well as his fascination with physical and spiritual journeys.[11]
In 1975, Kiarostami directed two short films So Can I and Two Solutions for One Problem. In early 1976, he released Colors, followed by the fifty-four-minute film A Wedding Suit, a story about three teenagers coming into conflict over a suit for a wedding.[12][13]
Kiarostami's first feature film was the 112-minute Report (1977). It revolved around the life of a tax collector accused of accepting bribes; suicide was among its themes. In 1979, he produced and directed First Case, Second Case.[citation needed]
1980s[edit]
In the early 1980s, Kiarostami directed several short films including Toothache (1980), Orderly or Disorderly (1981), and The Chorus (1982). In 1983, he directed Fellow Citizen. It was not until his release of Where Is the Friend's Home? that he began to gain recognition outside Iran.[citation needed]
The film tells a simple account of a conscientious eight-year-old schoolboy's quest to return his friend's notebook in a neighboring village lest his friend be expelled from school. The traditional beliefs of Iranian rural people are portrayed. The film has been noted for its poetic use of the Iranian rural landscape and its realism, both important elements of Kiarostami's work. Kiarostami made the film from a child's point of view.[14][15]
Where Is the Friend's Home?, And Life Goes On (1992) (also known as Life and Nothing More), and Through the Olive Trees (1994) are described by critics as theKoker trilogy, because all three films feature the village of Koker in northern Iran. The films also relate to the 1990 Manjil–Rudbar earthquake, in which 40,000 people died. Kiarostami uses the themes of life, death, change, and continuity to connect the films. The trilogy was successful in France in the 1990s and other Western European countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Finland.[16] But, Kiarostami did not consider the three films to comprise a trilogy. He suggested that the last two titles plus Taste of Cherry (1997) comprise a trilogy, given their common theme of the preciousness of life.[17] In 1987, Kiarostami was involved in the screenwriting of The Key, which he edited but did not direct. In 1989, he released Homework.[citation needed]
1990s[edit]
Kiarostami's first film of the decade was Close-Up (1990), which narrates the story of the real-life trial of a man who impersonated film-maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, conning a family into believing they would star in his new film. The family suspects theft as the motive for this charade, but the impersonator, Hossein Sabzian, argues that his motives were more complex. The part-documentary, part-staged film examines Sabzian's moral justification for usurping Makhmalbaf's identity, questioning his ability to sense his cultural and artistic flair.[18][19] Ranked #42 in British Film Institute's The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time, Close-Up received praise from directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, and Nanni Moretti[20] and was released across Europe.[21]
In 1992, Kiarostami directed Life, and Nothing More..., regarded by critics as the second film of the Koker trilogy. The film follows a father and his young son as they drive from Tehran to Koker in search of two young boys who they fear might have perished in the 1990 earthquake. As the father and son travel through the devastated landscape, they meet earthquake survivors forced to carry on with their lives amid disaster.[22][23][24] That year Kiarostami won a Prix Roberto Rossellini, the first professional film award of his career, for his direction of the film. The last film of the so-called Koker trilogy was Through the Olive Trees (1994), which expands a peripheral scene from Life and Nothing More into the central drama.[25] Critics such asAdrian Martin have called the style of filmmaking in the Koker trilogy as "diagrammatical", linking the zig-zagging patterns in the landscape and the geometry of forces of life and the world.[26][27] A flashback of the zigzag path in Life and Nothing More... (1992) in turn triggers the spectator's memory of the previous film, Where Is the Friend's Home? from 1987, shot before the earthquake. This symbolically links to the post-earthquake reconstruction in Through the Olive Trees in 1994. In 1995,Miramax Films released Through the Olive Trees in the US theaters.[citation needed]
Kiarostami next wrote the screenplays for The Journey and The White Balloon (1995), for his former assistant Jafar Panahi.[7] Between 1995 and 1996, he was involved in the production of Lumière and Company, a collaboration with 40 other film directors.[citation needed]
Kiarostami won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes Film Festival for Taste of Cherry.[28] It is the drama of a man, Mr. Badii, determined to commit suicide. The film involved themes such as morality, the legitimacy of the act of suicide, and the meaning of compassion.[29]
Kiarostami directed The Wind Will Carry Us in 1999, which won the Grand Jury Prize (Silver Lion) at the Venice International Film Festival. The film contrasted rural and urban views on the dignity of labor, addressing themes of gender equality and the benefits of progress, by means of a stranger's sojourn in a remote Kurdish village.[16]An unusual feature of the movie is that many of the characters are heard but not seen; at least thirteen to fourteen speaking characters in the film are never seen.[30]
2000s[edit]
In 2000, at the San Francisco Film Festival award ceremony, Kiarostami was awarded the Akira Kurosawa Prize for lifetime achievement in directing, but surprised everyone by giving it away to veteran Iranian actor Behrooz Vossoughi for his contribution to Iranian cinema.[31][32]
In 2001, Kiarostami and his assistant, Seifollah Samadian, traveled to Kampala, Uganda at the request of the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development, to film a documentary about programs assisting Ugandan orphans. He stayed for ten days and made ABC Africa. The trip was originally intended as a research in preparation for the filming, but Kiarostami ended up editing the entire film from the video footage shot there.[33] The high number of orphans in Uganda has resulted from the deaths of parents in the AIDS epidemic.[citation needed]
Time Out editor and National Film Theatre chief programmer, Geoff Andrew, said in referring to the film: "Like his previous four features, this film is not about death but life-and-death: how they're linked, and what attitude we might adopt with regard to their symbiotic inevitability."[34]
The following year, Kiarostami directed Ten, revealing an unusual method of filmmaking and abandoning many scriptwriting conventions.[30] Kiarostami focused on the socio-political landscape of Iran. The images are seen through the eyes of one woman as she drives through the streets of Tehran over a period of several days. Her journey is composed of ten conversations with various passengers, which include her sister, a hitchhiking prostitute, and a jilted bride and her demanding young son. This style of filmmaking was praised by a number of critics.[citation needed]
A. O. Scott in The New York Times wrote that Kiarostami, "in addition to being perhaps the most internationally admired Iranian filmmaker of the past decade, is also among the world masters of automotive cinema...He understands the automobile as a place of reflection, observation and, above all, talk."[35]
In 2003, Kiarostami directed Five, a poetic feature with no dialogue or characterization. It consists of five long shots of nature which are single-take sequences, shot with a hand-held DV camera, along the shores of the Caspian Sea. Although the film lacks a clear storyline, Geoff Andrew argues that the film is "more than just pretty pictures". He adds, "Assembled in order, they comprise a kind of abstract or emotional narrative arc, which moves evocatively from separation and solitude to community, from motion to rest, near-silence to sound and song, light to darkness and back to light again, ending on a note of rebirth and regeneration."He notes the degree of artifice concealed behind the apparent simplicity of the imagery.[36]
Kiarostami produced 10 on Ten (2004), a journal documentary that shares ten lessons on movie-making while he drives through the locations of his past films. The movie is shot on digital video with a stationary camera mounted inside the car, in a manner reminiscent of Taste of Cherry and Ten. In 2005 and 2006, he directed The Roads of Kiarostami, a 32-minute documentary that reflects on the power of landscape, combining austere black-and-white photographs with poetic observations,[37]engaging music with political subject matter. Also in 2005, Kiarostami contributed the central section to Tickets, a portmanteau film set on a train traveling through Italy. The other segments were directed by Ken Loach and Ermanno Olmi.[citation needed]
In 2008, Kiarostami directed the feature Shirin, which features close-ups of many notable Iranian actresses and the French actress Juliette Binoche as they watch a film based on a partly mythological Persian romance tale of Khosrow and Shirin, with themes of female self-sacrifice.[38][39] The film has been described as "a compelling exploration of the relationship between image, sound and female spectatorship."[37]
That summer, he directed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Così fan tutte conducted by Christophe Rousset at Festival d'Aix-en-Provence starring with William Shimell. But the following year's performances at the English National Opera was impossible to direct because of refusal of permission to travel abroad from his country.[40]
2010s[edit]
Certified Copy (2010), again starring Juliette Binoche, was made in Tuscany and was Kiarostami's first film to be shot and produced outside Iran.[37] The story of an encounter between a British man and a French woman, it was entered in competition for the Palme d'Or in the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian describes the film as an "intriguing oddity", and said, "Certified Copy is the deconstructed portrait of a marriage, acted with well-intentioned fervour by Juliette Binoche, but persistently baffling, contrived, and often simply bizarre – a highbrow misfire of the most peculiar sort."[41] He concluded that the film is "unmistakably an example of Kiarostami's compositional technique, though not a successful example."[41] Roger Ebert, however, praised the film, noting that "Kiarostami is rather brilliant in the way he creates offscreen spaces."[42] Binoche won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her performance in the film. Kiarostami's final film, Like Someone in Love, set and shot in Japan, received mostly positive reviews by critics.[citation needed]
Film festival work[edit]
Kiarostami was a jury member at numerous film festivals, most notably the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, 2002 and 2005. He was also the president of the Caméra d'OrJury in Cannes Film Festival 2005. He was announced as the president of the Cinéfondation and short film sections of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.[43]
Other representatives include the Venice Film Festival in 1985, the Locarno International Film Festival in 1990, the San Sebastian International Film Festival in 1996, the São Paulo International Film Festival in 2004, the Capalbio Cinema Festival in 2007 (in which he was president of the jury), and the Küstendorf Film and Music Festival in 2011.[44][45][46] He also made regular appearances at many other film festivals across Europe, including the Estoril Film Festival in Portugal.[citation needed]
Cinematic style[edit]
Main article: Cinematic style of Abbas Kiarostami
Individualism[edit]
Though Kiarostami has been compared to Satyajit Ray, Vittorio de Sica, Éric Rohmer, and Jacques Tati, his films exhibit a singular style, often employing techniques of his own invention.[7]
During the filming of The Bread and Alley in 1970, Kiarostami had major differences with his experienced cinematographer about how to film the boy and the attacking dog. While the cinematographer wanted separate shots of the boy approaching, a close-up of his hand as he enters the house and closes the door, followed by a shot of the dog, Kiarostami believed that if the three scenes could be captured as a whole it would have a more profound impact in creating tension over the situation. That one shot took around forty days to complete, until Kiarostami was fully content with the scene. Kiarostami later commented that the breaking of scenes would have disrupted the rhythm and content of the film's structure, preferring to let the scene flow as one.[10]
Unlike other directors, Kiarostami showed no interest in staging extravagant combat scenes or complicated chase scenes in large-scale productions, instead attempting to mold the medium of film to his own specifications.[47] Kiarostami appeared to have settled on his style with the Koker trilogy, which included a myriad of references to his own film material, connecting common themes and subject matter between each of the films. Stephen Bransford has contended that Kiarostami's films do not contain references to the work of other directors, but are fashioned in such a manner that they are self-referenced. Bransford believes his films are often fashioned into an ongoing dialectic with one film reflecting on and partially demystifying an earlier film.[25]
He continued experimenting with new modes of filming, using different directorial methods and techniques. A case in point is Ten, which was filmed in a moving automobile in which Kiarostami was not present. He gave suggestions to the actors about what to do, and a camera placed on the dashboard filmed them while they drove around Tehran.[10][48] The camera was allowed to roll, capturing the faces of the people involved during their daily routine, using a series of extreme-close shots.Ten was an experiment that used digital cameras to virtually eliminate the director. This new direction towards a digital micro-cinema is defined as a micro-budget filmmaking practice, allied with a digital production basis.[49]
Kiarostami's cinema offers a different definition of film. According to film professors such as Jamsheed Akrami of William Paterson University, Kiarostami consistently tried to redefine film by forcing the increased involvement of the audience. In his later years, he also progressively trimmed the timespan within his films. Akrami thinks that this reduces the filmmaking from a collective endeavor to a purer, more basic form of artistic expression.[47]
Fiction and non-fiction[edit]
Kiarostami's films contain a notable degree of ambiguity, an unusual mixture of simplicity and complexity, and often a mix of fictional and documentary elements (docufiction). Kiarostami has stated, "We can never get close to the truth except through lying."[7][50]
The boundary between fiction and non-fiction is significantly reduced in Kiarostami's cinema.[51] The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, writing about Kiarostami, and in particular Life and Nothing More..., has argued that his films are neither quite fiction nor quite documentary. Life and Nothing More..., he argues, is neither representation nor reportage, but rather"evidence":
For Jean-Luc Nancy, this notion of cinema as "evidence", rather than as documentary or imagination, is tied to the way Kiarostami deals with life-and-death (cf. the remark by Geoff Andrew on ABC Africa, cited above, to the effect that Kiarostami's films are not about death but about life-and-death):
In other words, wanting to accomplish more than just represent life and death as opposing forces, but rather to illustrate the way in which each element of nature is inextricably linked, Kiarostami devised a cinema that does more than just present the viewer with the documentable "facts," but neither is it simply a matter of artifice. Because "existence" means more than simply life, it is projective, containing an irreducibly fictive element, but in this "being more than" life, it is therefore contaminated by mortality. Nancy is giving a clue, in other words, toward the interpretation of Kiarostami's statement that lying is the only way to truth.[54][55]
Themes of life and death[edit]
The concepts of change and continuity, in addition to the themes of life and death, play a major role in Kiarostami's works. In the Koker trilogy, these themes play a central role. As illustrated in the aftermath of the 1990 Tehran earthquake disaster, they also represent the power of human resilience to overcome and defy destruction.[citation needed]
Unlike the Koker films, which convey an instinctual thirst for survival, Taste of Cherry explores the fragility of life and focuses on how precious it is.[17]
Symbols of death abound in The Wind Will Carry Us, with the scenery of the graveyard, the imminence of the old woman's passing, and the ancestors referred to early in the film by the character Farzad. Such devices prompt the viewer to reflect on the parameters of the afterlife and immaterial existence. The viewer is asked to consider what constitutes the soul, and what happens to it after death. In discussing the film, Kiarostami said that he is the person who raises questions, rather than answers them.[56]
Some film critics believe that the assemblage of light versus dark scenes in Kiarostami's film grammar, such as in Taste of Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us, suggests the mutual existence of life with its endless possibilities, and death as a factual moment of anyone's life.[57]
Visual and audio techniques[edit]
Kiarostami's style is notable for the use of panoramic long shots, such as in the closing sequences of Life and Nothing More and Through the Olive Trees, where the audience is intentionally distanced physically from the characters in order to stimulate reflection on their fate. Taste of Cherry is punctuated throughout by shots of this kind, including distant overhead shots of the suicidal Badii's car moving across the hills, usually while he is conversing with a passenger. However, the visual distancing techniques stand in juxtaposition to the sound of the dialog, which always remains in the foreground. Like the coexistence of a private and public space, or the frequent framing of landscapes through car windows, this fusion of distance with proximity can be seen as a way of generating suspense in the most mundane of moments.[23]
This relationship between distance and intimacy, between imagery and sound, is also present in the opening sequence to The Wind Will Carry Us. Michael J. Anderson has argued that such a thematic application of this central concept of presence without presence, through using such techniques, and by often referring to characters which the viewer does not see and sometimes not hear directly affects the nature and concept of space in the geographical framework in which the world is portrayed. Kiarostami's use of sound and imagery conveys a world beyond what is directly visible and/or audible, which Anderson believes emphasizes the interconnectedness and shrinking of time and space in the modern world of telecommunications.[56]
Other commentators such as film critic Ben Zipper believe that Kiarostami's work as a landscape artist is evident in his compositional distant shots of the dry hills throughout a number of his films directly impacting on his construction on the rural landscapes within his films.[57]
Poetry and imagery[edit]
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, of the University of Maryland, argues that one aspect of Kiarostami's cinematic style is that he is able to capture the essence of Persian poetryand create poetic imagery within the landscape of his films. In several of his movies such as Where is the Friend's Home and The Wind Will Carry Us, classical Persian poetry is directly quoted in the film, highlighting the artistic link and intimate connection between them. This in turn reflects on the connection between the past and present, between continuity and change.[58]
The characters recite poems mainly from classical Persian poet Omar Khayyám or modern Persian poets such as Sohrab Sepehri and Forough Farrokhzad. One scene in The Wind Will Carry Us has a long shot of a wheat field with rippling golden crops through which the doctor, accompanied by the filmmaker, is riding his scooter in a twisting road. In response to the comment that the other world is a better place than this one, the doctor recites this poem of Khayyam:[57]
However, the aesthetic element involved with the poetry goes much farther back in time and is used more subtly than these examples suggest. Beyond issues of adaptation of text to film, Kiarostami often begins with an insistent will to give visual embodiment to certain specific image-making techniques in Persian poetry, both classical and modern. This prominently results in enunciating a larger philosophical position, namely the ontological oneness of poetry and film.[58]
It has been argued that the creative merit of Kiarostami's adaptation of Sohrab Sepehri and Forough Farrokhzad's poems extends the domain of textual transformation. Adaptation is defined as the transformation of a prior to a new text. Sima Daad of the University of Washington contends that Kiarostami's adaptation arrives at the theoretical realm of adaptation by expanding its limit from inter-textual potential to trans-generic potential.[59]
Spirituality[edit]
Kiarostami's films often reflect upon immaterial concepts such as soul and afterlife. At times, however, the very concept of the spiritual seems to be contradicted by the medium. Some film theorists have argued that The Wind Will Carry Us provides a template by which a filmmaker can communicate metaphysical reality. The limits of the frame, the material representation of a space in dialog with another that is not represented, physically become metaphors for the relationship between this world and those which may exist apart from it. By limiting the space of the mise en scène, Kiarostami expands the space of the art.[56]
Kiarostami's "complex" sound-images and philosophical approach have caused frequent comparisons with "mystical" filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Robert Bresson. While acknowledging substantial cultural differences, much of Western critical writing about Kiarostami positions him as the Iranian equivalent of such directors, by virtue of a similarly austere, "spiritual" poetics and moral commitment.[60] Some draw parallels between certain imagery in Kiarostami's films with that ofSufi concepts.[61]
While most English-language writers, such as David Sterritt and the Spanish film professor Alberto Elena, interpret Kiarostami's films as spiritual, other critics, includingDavid Walsh and Hamish Ford, have not rated its influence in his films as lower.[17][60][61]
Poetry, art and photography[edit]
Kiarostami, along with Jean Cocteau, Satyajit Ray, Derek Jarman, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Gulzar, was a filmmaker who expressed himself in other genres, such as poetry, set designs, painting, or photography. They expressed their interpretation of the world and their understanding of our preoccupations and identities.[62]
Kiarostami was a noted photographer and poet. A bilingual collection of more than 200 of his poems, Walking with the Wind, was published by Harvard University Press. His photographic work includes Untitled Photographs, a collection of over thirty photographs, mostly of snow landscapes, taken in his hometown Tehran, between 1978 and 2003. In 1999, He also published a collection of his poems.[7][63] Kiarostami also produced Mozart's opera, Così fan tutte, which premiered in Aix-en-Provence in 2003 before being performed at the English National Opera in London in 2004.[37]
Riccardo Zipoli, from the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, has studied the relations and interconnections between Kiarostami's poems and his films. The results of the analysis reveal how Kiarostami's treatment of "uncertain reality" is similar in his poems and films.[64] Kiarostami's poetry is reminiscent of the later nature poems of the Persian painter-poet, Sohrab Sepehri. On the other hand, the succinct allusion to philosophical truths without the need for deliberation, the non-judgmental tone of the poetic voice, and the structure of the poem—absence of personal pronouns, adverbs or over reliance on adjectives—as well as the lines containing a kigo (きご季語, a "season word") gives much of this poetry a haikuesque characteristic.[62]
All of the original poetry books by Kiarostami alongside his selections from Persian classic and contemporary poets includingNima, Hafez, Rumi and Saadi were translated into English by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin in 2015 and were published as bilingual (Persian/English) editions in New York City.[65][66][67][68][69][70] Kiarostami has two other poetry books which are anthologies entitled Night with his selections from a variety of classical and contemporary Persian poets on the topic of Night which were translated into English as well.[71]
Personal life[edit]
In 1969, Kiarostami married Parvin Amir-Gholi. They had two sons, Ahmad (born 1971) and Bahman (1978). They divorced in 1982.[citation needed]
Kiarostami was one of the few directors who remained in Iran after the 1979 revolution, when many of his peers fled the country. He believes that it was one of the most important decisions of his career. His permanent base in Iran and his national identity have consolidated his ability as a filmmaker:
Kiarostami frequently wore dark spectacles or sunglasses, which he required because of a sensitivity to light.[73]
Illness and death[edit]
In March 2016, Kiarostami was hospitalized due to intestinal bleeding and reportedly went into a coma[74] after undergoing two operations. Sources, including a Ministry of Health and Medical Education spokesman, reported that Kiarostami was suffering from gastrointestinal cancer.[74][75] On 3 April 2016, Reza Paydar, the director of Kiarostami's medical team, made a statement denying that the filmmaker had cancer.[75] However, in late June he left Iran for treatment in a Paris hospital,[76] where he died on 4 July.[77] Just last week before his death, Kiarostami had been invited to join the Academy Awards in Hollywood as part of efforts to increase the diversity of itsOSCAR judges.[78] Ali Ahani, Iran's ambassador to France stated that Kiarostami's body will be transferred to Iran to be buried at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery.[79]However, it was later announced that his body will be buried in Lavasan, a resort town about 40 kilometers northeast of Tehran, based on his own will, after it is flown back to Tehran from Paris.[80] His body was returned to Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on 8 July, while a crowd of Iranian film directors, actors, actresses and other artists were in Tehran airport to pay their respects.[81]
Mohammad Shirvani, a close friend to Kiarostami wrote in his Facebook account a quote from him on 8 June 2016 that he has criticized his medical team: "I do not believe I could stand and direct any more films. They destroyed that [digestive system]." After this comment, a campaign was set by Iranians in twitter and Facebook to follows Kiarostami's health and possible medical error in his treatment. However, Ahmad Kiarostami, elder son of Kiarostami denied any medical errors in his father's treatment after Shirvani's comment and said that his father's health is not emergency. After Kiarostami's death, Alireza Zali, Head of Kiarostami's Medical Council Organization sent a letter to his French counterpart Patrick Bouet urged him to send the medical dossier of Kiarostami to Iran for more researches about possible medical error. He added evaluating the aspects of the death of the Iranian artist is considered as a grave concern of Iran's Medical Council Organization. He said the Medical Council Organization had established an expert group for evaluating the medical dossier of Kiarostami in Iran.[82] On 13 July 2016, and nine days after Kiarostami's death, his family officially complained from Kiarostami's personal doctor for mistake in his treatment. Dariush Mehrjui, famous Iranian cinema director also criticized Kiarostami's medical team and demanded them for a trial.
Reactions[edit]
Martin Scorsese said he was "deeply shocked and saddened" by the news.[83] Oscar-winning Iranian film-maker Asghar Farhadi – who had been due to fly to Paris to visit his friend – said he was "very sad, in total shock". Mohsen Makhmalbaf echoed the sentiment, saying Iran's cinema owes its global reputation to his fellow director, but that this visibility did not translate into a greater visibility for his work in his homeland. "Kiarostami gave the Iranian cinema the international credibility that it has today," he told The Guardian. "But his films were unfortunately not seen as much in Iran. He changed the world's cinema; he freshened it and humanised it in contrast with Hollywood's rough version."[77] Persian mystic and poet Jalal al-Din Rumi's 22nd niece Esin Celebi also expressed her condolences over the demise of Kiarostami in a separate message. Iran's representative office at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO also opened a memorial book for signature to honour Kiatostami.[84]
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Twitter that the director's "different and profound attitude towards life and his invitation to peace and friendship" would be a "lasting achievement."[85] Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif also said Kiarostami's death was a loss for international cinema. In a statement, French President François Hollande praised the director for forging "close artistic ties and deep friendships" with France.
Medias, such as The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The Independent, Associated Press, Euronewsand Le Monde also reacted to Kiarostami's death. The New York Times wrote: "Abbas Kiarostami, Acclaimed Iranian Filmmaker, Dies at 76"[86] and Peter Bradshaw payed tribute to Kiarostami: "a sophisticated, self-possessed master of cinematic poetry"[87]
The crowd that had gathered for this service in Paris held a vigil by the River Seine. They then allowed the Seine waves to take photos of Kiarostami that the crowd had left on the river floating. It was symbolic moment of saying goodbye to a film director that many Iranians have come to passionately appreciate.
Funeral[edit]
Artists, cultural authorities, government officials and the Iranian people gathered to say goodbye to Kiarostami on 10 July, in an emotional funeral, six days after his passing in France. The ceremony was held at the Center for the Intellectual Education of Children, where he began his film-making career some 40 years ago.[88]Attendees held banners with the titles of his movies and pictures of his most famous posters, as they praised the support Kiarostami contribution to culture, and particularly, to filmmaking in Iran. The ceremony was hosted by famous Iranian actor Parviz Parastooie, and included speeches by painter Aidin Aghdashlou and by also prize-winning film director Asghar Farhadi, who stressed his professional abilities. He was later buried in a private ceremony in northern Tehran town,Lavasan.[89][90][91]
Reception and criticism[edit]
Kiarostami has received worldwide acclaim for his work from both audiences and critics, and, in 1999, he was voted the most important film director of the 1990s by two international critics' polls.[92] Four of his films were placed in the top six of Cinematheque Ontario's Best of the '90s poll.[93] He has gained recognition from film theorists, critics, as well as peers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Nanni Moretti (who made a short film about opening one of Kiarostami's films in his theater in Rome),Chris Marker, and Ray Carney. Akira Kurosawa said of Kiarostami's films: "Words cannot describe my feelings about them ... When Satyajit Ray passed on, I was very depressed. But after seeing Kiarostami's films, I thanked God for giving us just the right person to take his place."[7][94] Critically acclaimed directors such as Martin Scorsese have commented that "Kiarostami represents the highest level of artistry in the cinema."[95] The Austrian director Michael Haneke has admired the work of Abbas Kiarostami as among the best of any living director.[96] In 2006, The Guardian's panel of critics ranked Kiarostami as the best contemporary non-American film director.[97]
Critics such as Jonathan Rosenbaum have argued that "there's no getting around the fact that the movies of Abbas Kiarostami divide audiences—in this country, in his native Iran, and everywhere else they're shown."[23] Rosenbaum argues that disagreements and controversy over Kiarostami's movies have arisen from his style of film-making because what in Hollywood would count as essential narrative information is frequently missing from Kiarostami's films. Camera placement, likewise, often defies standard audience expectations: in the closing sequences of Life and Nothing More and Through the Olive Trees, the audience is forced to imagine the dialogue and circumstances of important scenes. In Homework and Close-Up, parts of the soundtrack are masked or silenced. Critics have argued that the subtlety of Kiarostami's cinematic expression is largely resistant to critical analysis.[98]
While Kiarostami has won significant acclaim in Europe for several of his films, the Iranian government has refused to permit the screening of his films. he responded, "The government has decided not to show any of my films for the past 10 years... I think they don't understand my films and so prevent them being shown just in case there is a message they don't want to get out".[95]
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Kiarostami was refused a visa to attend the New York Film Festival.[99][100] The festival director, Richard Peña, who had invited him said, "It's a terrible sign of what's happening in my country today that no one seems to realize or care about the kind of negative signal this sends out to the entire Muslim world".[95] The Finnish film director Aki Kaurismäki boycotted the festival in protest.[101] Kiarostami had been invited by the New York Film Festival, as well as Ohio University and Harvard University.[102]
In 2005, London Film School organized a workshop as well as festival of Kiarostami's work, titled "Abbas Kiarostami: Visions of the Artist". Ben Gibson, Director of the London Film School, said, "Very few people have the creative and intellectual clarity to invent cinema from its most basic elements, from the ground up. We are very lucky to have the chance to see a master like Kiarostami thinking on his feet."[103]
In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 coorganized a festival of the Kiarostami's work titled Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker.[104]
Kiarostami and his cinematic style have been the subject of several books and two films, Opening Day of Close-Up (1996), directed by Nanni Moretti and Abbas Kiarostami: The Art of Living (2003), directed by Fergus Daly.[citation needed]
Kiarostami was a member of the advisory board of World Cinema Foundation. Founded by the director Martin Scorsese, its goal is to find and reconstruct world cinema films that have been long neglected.[105][106]
Honors and awards[edit]
Main article: List of awards won by Abbas Kiarostami
Kiarostami has won the admiration of audiences and critics worldwide and received at least seventy awards up to the year 2000.[107] Here are some representatives:
- Prix Roberto Rossellini (1992)
- Prix Cine Decouvertes (1992)
- François Truffaut Award (1993)
- Pier Paolo Pasolini Award (1995)
- Federico Fellini Gold Medal, UNESCO (1997)
- Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival (1997)
- Honorary Golden Alexander Prize, Thessaloniki International Film Festival (1999)
- Silver Lion, Venice Film Festival (1999)
- Akira Kurosawa Award (2000)
- Honorary doctorate, École Normale Supérieure (2003)
- Konrad Wolf Prize (2003)
- President of the Jury for Caméra d'Or Award, Cannes Festival (2005)
- Fellowship of the British Film Institute (2005)
- Gold Leopard of Honor, Locarno International Film Festival (2005)
- Prix Henri-Langlois Prize (2006)
- Honorary doctorate, University of Toulouse (2007)
- World's great masters, Kolkata International Film Festival (2007)
- Glory to the Filmmaker Award, Venice Film Festival (2008)
- Honorary doctorate, University of Paris (2010)
- Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to World Cinematography (BIAFF - Batumi International Art-house film Festival, 2010)
- Japan's Medal of Honor (2013)
- Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (2014)
- Honorary Golden Orange Prize, International Antalya Film Festival (2014)
Books by Kiarostami[edit]
- Havres : French translation by Tayebeh Hashemi and Jean-Restom Nasser, ÉRÈS (PO&PSY); Bilingual edition (3 June 2010) ISBN 978-2-7492-1223-4.
- Abbas Kiarostami: Cahiers du Cinema Livres (24 October 1997) ISBN 2-86642-196-5.
- Walking with the Wind (Voices and Visions in Film): English translation by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak and Michael C. Beard, Harvard Film Archive; Bilingual edition (28 February 2002) ISBN 0-674-00844-8.
- 10 (ten): Cahiers du Cinema Livres (5 September 2002) ISBN 2-86642-346-1.
- With Nahal Tajadod and Jean-Claude Carrière Avec le vent: P.O.L. (5 May 2002) ISBN 2-86744-889-1.
- Le vent nous emportera: Cahiers du Cinema Livres (5 September 2002) ISBN 2-86642-347-X.
- La Lettre du Cinema: P.O.L. (12 December 1997) ISBN 2-86744-589-2.
- Kiarostami, Abbas- (Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin). With the Wind -Persian / English dual language- Sticking Place (2015) ISBN 0990530825
- Kiarostami, Abbas- (Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin). Wind and Leaf -Persian / English dual language- Sticking Place (2015) ISBN 0990530833
- Kiarostami, Abbas- (Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin). A Wolf on Watch -Persian / English dual language- Sticking Place (2015) ISBN 0990530841
- Kiarostami, Abbas- (Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin). Wine (poetry by Hafez) -Persian / English dual language- Sticking Place (2015) ISBN 1942782128
- Kiarostami, Abbas- (Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin). Tears (poetry by Saadi) -Persian / English dual language- Sticking Place (2015) ISBN 1942782098
- Kiarostami, Abbas- (Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin). Water (poetry by Nima) -Persian / English dual language- Sticking Place (2015) ISBN 1942782179
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Abbas Kiarostami, (born June 22, 1940, Tehrān, Iran—died July 4, 2016, Paris, France) Iranian director-writer known for experimenting with the boundaries between reality and fiction.
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 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, endegī 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, īr-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 nadīk (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. 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’sUnagi (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 10 (2002) 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: 5 Long Takes Dedicated to Yasujiro Ou (2003) is five scenes of a seashore shot without camera movement in a style inspired by that of Japanese director Ou 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 poemKhosrow 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 10 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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Abbas Kiarostami, (b. June 22, 1940, Tehrān, Iran — d. July 4, 2016, Paris, France) was an Iranian director-writer known for experimenting with the boundaries between reality and fiction.
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 Tehran 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 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 Khaneh-ye dust kojast? (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, endegi va digar 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 centered around a car trip, a motif he would return to often in his career. The final film in the trilogy, ir-e darakhtan-e evton (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 nadik (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.
Kiarostami's 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. 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 Shohei'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 10 (2002) 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: 5 Long Takes Dedicated to Yasujiro Ou (2003) is five scenes of a seashore shot without camera movement in a style inspired by that of Japanese director Ou Yasujiro, 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 Nezami'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 10 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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