Abbas Kiarostami (Persian:عباس کیارستمی[ʔæbˌbɒːskijɒːɾostæˈmi]ⓘ; 22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer.[2][3][4] An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over forty films, includingshorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing theKoker trilogy (1987–1994),Close-Up (1990),The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), andTaste of Cherry (1997), which was awarded thePalme d'Or at theCannes Film Festival that year. In later works,Certified Copy (2010) andLike Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively. His filmsWhere Is the Friend's House? (1987),Close-Up, andThe Wind Will Carry Us were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 critics' poll byBBC Culture.[5]Close-Up was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the famous decennialSight & Sound poll conducted in 2012.[6][7]
Kiarostami had worked extensively as ascreenwriter, film editor,art director, and producer and had designed credit titles and publicity material. He was also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, andgraphic designer. He was part of a generation of filmmakers in theIranian New Wave, aPersian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and emphasized the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues.[8]
Kiarostami had a reputation for using child protagonists, for documentary-style narrative films,[9] 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 ofPersian 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.
Kiarostami majored in painting and graphic design at theUniversity of Tehran College of Fine arts.
Kiarostami was born inTehran to a Persian family. 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 theUniversity of Tehran School of Fine Arts.[10] He majored in painting and graphic design and supported his studies by working as a traffic policeman.[11]
As a painter, designer, and illustrator, Kiarostami worked in advertising in the 1960s, designingposters 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 (includingGheysar byMasoud Kimiai) and illustrating children's books.[10][12]
In 1970 when theIranian New Wave began withDariush Mehrjui's filmGāv, 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-minuteThe Bread and Alley (1970), aneorealistic 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 asThe Runner andBashu, the Little Stranger.[10]
In the 1970s, Kiarostami pursued anindividualistic style of film making.[13] When discussing his first film, he stated:
Bread and Alley was my first experience in cinema and I must say a very difficult one. I had to work with a very young child, a dog, and an unprofessional crew except for the cinematographer, who was nagging and complaining all the time. Well, the cinematographer, in a sense, was right because I did not follow the conventions of film making that he had become accustomed to.[14]
FollowingThe Experience (1973), Kiarostami releasedThe 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 forrealism,diegetic simplicity, and stylistic complexity, as well as his fascination with physical and spiritual journeys.[15]
In 1975, Kiarostami directed two short filmsSo Can I andTwo Solutions for One Problem. In early 1976, he releasedColors, followed by the fifty-four-minute filmA Wedding Suit, a story about three teenagers coming into conflict over a suit for a wedding.[16][17]
Kiarostami in 1977
Kiarostami then directedReport (1977). With a 112-minute runtime, it was considerably longer than his previous work. The film revolved around the life of atax collector accused of accepting bribes; suicide was among its themes. In 1979, he produced and directedFirst Case, Second Case.[18]
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.[19][20]
Where Is the Friend's House?,And Life Goes On (1992) (also known asLife and Nothing More), andThrough the Olive Trees (1994) are described by critics as theKoker trilogy, because all three films feature the village ofKoker in northern Iran. The films also relate to the1990 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 theNetherlands, Sweden, Germany andFinland.[21] But, Kiarostami did not consider the three films to comprise a trilogy. He suggested that the last two titles plusTaste of Cherry (1997) comprise a trilogy, given their common theme of the preciousness of life.[22] In 1987, Kiarostami was involved in the screenwriting ofThe Key, which he edited but did not direct. In 1989, he releasedHomework.[citation needed]
Kiarostami's first film of the decade wasClose-Up (1990), which narrates the story of the real-life trial of a man who impersonated film-makerMohsen 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.[23][24] Ranked No. 42 inBritish Film Institute'sThe Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time,Close-Up received praise from directors such asQuentin Tarantino,Martin Scorsese,Werner Herzog,Jean-Luc Godard, andNanni Moretti[25] and was released across Europe.[26]
In 1992, Kiarostami directedLife, and Nothing More..., regarded by critics as the second film of theKoker 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.[27][28][29]That year Kiarostami won aPrix Roberto Rossellini, the first professional film award of his career, for his direction of the film. The last film of the so-calledKoker trilogy wasThrough the Olive Trees (1994), which expands a peripheral scene fromLife and Nothing More into the central drama.[30]Critics such asAdrian Martin have called the style of filmmaking in theKoker trilogy as "diagrammatical", linking the zig-zagging patterns in the landscape and the geometry of forces of life and the world.[31][32] A flashback of the zigzag path inLife 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 inThrough the Olive Trees in 1994. In 1995,Miramax Films releasedThrough the Olive Trees in the US theaters.[citation needed]
Kiarostami won thePalme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at theCannes Film Festival forTaste of Cherry.[33] 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.[34]
Kiarostami directedThe Wind Will Carry Us in 1999, which won the Grand Jury Prize (Silver Lion) at theVenice International Film Festival. The film contrasted rural and urban views on thedignity of labor, addressing themes of gender equality and the benefits of progress, by means of a stranger's sojourn in a remoteKurdish village.[21] 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.[35]
In 2000, at theSan Francisco Film Festival award ceremony, Kiarostami was awarded theAkira Kurosawa Prize for lifetime achievement in directing, but surprised everyone by giving it away to veteran Iranian actorBehrooz Vossoughi for his contribution to Iranian cinema.[36][37]
In 2001, Kiarostami and his assistant, Seifollah Samadian, traveled toKampala,Uganda at the request of the United NationsInternational Fund for Agricultural Development, to film a documentary about programs assisting Ugandan orphans. He stayed for ten days and madeABC Africa. The trip was originally intended as research in preparation for the filming, but Kiarostami ended up editing the entire film from the video footage shot there.[38] The high number of orphans in Uganda has resulted from the deaths of parents in theAIDS epidemic.[citation needed]
Time Out editor andNational 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."[39]
The following year, Kiarostami directedTen, revealing an unusual method of filmmaking and abandoning many scriptwriting conventions.[35] 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 inThe 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."[40]
In 2003, Kiarostami directedFive, 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-heldDV camera, along the shores of theCaspian 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.[41][42]
In 2008, Kiarostami directed the featureShirin, which features close-ups of many notable Iranian actresses and the French actressJuliette Binoche as they watch a film based on a partly mythologicalPersian romance tale ofKhosrow and Shirin, with themes of female self-sacrifice.[43][44] The film has been described as "a compelling exploration of the relationship between image, sound and female spectatorship."[42]
Certified Copy (2010), again starring Juliette Binoche, was made in Tuscany and was Kiarostami's first film to be shot and produced outside Iran.[42] The story of an encounter between a British man and a French woman, it was entered in competition for thePalme d'Or in the2010 Cannes Film Festival.Peter Bradshaw ofThe 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."[46] He concluded that the film is "unmistakably an example of Kiarostami's compositional technique, though not a successful example."[46]Roger Ebert praised the film, noting that "Kiarostami is rather brilliant in the way he creates offscreen spaces."[47] Binoche won theBest Actress Award at Cannes for her performance in the film. Kiarostami's penultimate film,Like Someone in Love, set and shot in Japan, received largely positive reviews from critics.
Kiarostami's final film24 Frames was released posthumously in 2017. Anexperimental film based on 24 of Kiarostami's still photographs,24 Frames enjoyed a highly positive critical reception, with aRotten Tomatoes score of 92%.[48]
During the filming ofThe Bread and Alley in 1970, Kiarostami had major differences with his experiencedcinematographer about how to film the boy and the attacking dog. While the cinematographer wanted separate shots of the boy approaching, aclose-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 therhythm and content of the film's structure, preferring to let the scene flow as one.[14]
Unlike other directors, Kiarostami showed no interest in staging extravagantcombat scenes or complicated chase scenes in large-scale productions, instead attempting to mold the medium of film to his own specifications.[52] Kiarostami appeared to have settled on his style with theKoker 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.[30]
He continued experimenting with new modes of filming, using different directorial methods and techniques. A case in point isTen, 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 thedashboard filmed them while they drove around Tehran.[14][53] 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 adigital micro-cinema is defined as a micro-budget filmmaking practice, allied with a digital production basis.[54]
Kiarostami's cinema offers a different definition offilm. According to film professors such as Jamsheed Akrami ofWilliam 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 filmmaking from a collective endeavor to a purer, more basic form of artistic expression.[52]
Kiarostami interviewing withHabib Bavi [fa] in 2013
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."[10][55]
The boundary between fiction and non-fiction is significantly reduced in Kiarostami's cinema.[56] The French philosopherJean-Luc Nancy, writing about Kiarostami, and in particularLife 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":
[I]t all looks like reporting, but everything underscores (indique à l'évidence) that it is the fiction of a documentary (in fact, Kiarostami shot the film several months after the earthquake), and that it is rather a document about "fiction": not in the sense of imagining the unreal, but in the very specific and precise sense of the technique, of theart of constructing images. For the image by means of which, each time, each opens a world and precedes himself in it (s'y précède) is not pregiven (donnée toute faite) (as are those of dreams, phantasms or bad films): it is to be invented, cut and edited. Thus it isevidence, insofar as, if one day I happen tolook at my street on which I walk up and down ten times a day, I construct for an instant a newevidence of my street.[57]
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 onABC Africa, cited above, to the effect that Kiarostami's films are not about death but about life-and-death):
Existence resists the indifference of life-and-death, it lives beyond mechanical "life", it is always its own mourning, and its own joy. It becomes figure, image. It does not become alienated in images, but it is presented there: the images are the evidence of its existence, the objectivity of its assertion. This thought—which, for me, is the very thought of this film [Life and Nothing More...]—is a difficult thought, perhaps the most difficult. It's a slow thought, always underway, fraying a path so that the path itself becomes thought. It is that which frays images so that images become this thought, so that they become the evidence of this thought—and not to "represent" it.[58]
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.[59][60]
Kiarostami (left) at the Estoril Film Festival in 2010
The concepts of change and continuity, in addition to the themes of life and death, play a major role in Kiarostami's works. In theKoker trilogy, these themes play a central role. As illustrated in the aftermath of the1990 Manjil–Rudbar earthquake disaster, they also represent the power of human resilience to overcome and defy destruction.[61]
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.[22]
Some film critics believe that the assemblage of light versus dark scenes in Kiarostami's film grammar, such as inTaste of Cherry andThe Wind Will Carry Us, suggests the mutual existence of life with its endless possibilities, and death as a factual moment of anyone's life.[62]
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, of theUniversity of Maryland, argues that one aspect of Kiarostami's cinematic style is that he is able to capture the essence ofPersian poetry and create poetic imagery within the landscape of his films. In several of his movies such asWhere is the Friend's Home andThe 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.[63]The characters recite poems mainly from classical Persian poetOmar Khayyám or modern Persian poets such asSohrab Sepehri andForough Farrokhzad. One scene inThe 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:[62]
They promise ofhouries in heaven But I would say wine is better Take the present to the promises A drum sounds melodious from distance
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 theUniversity 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.[64]
Kiarostami's "complex" sound-images and philosophical approach have caused frequent comparisons with "mystical" filmmakers such asAndrei Tarkovsky andRobert 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.[65] Some draw parallels between certain imagery in Kiarostami's films with that ofSufi concepts.[66]
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 rated the influence of spirituality in his films as lower.[22][65][66]
Kiarostami was a noted photographer and poet. A bilingual collection of more than 200 of his poems,Walking with the Wind, was published byHarvard University Press. His photographic work includesUntitled 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.[10][68] Kiarostami also produced Mozart's operaCosì fan tutte, which premiered inAix-en-Provence in 2003 before being performed at theEnglish National Opera in London in 2004.[42]
Riccardo Zipoli, from theCa' 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.[69]Kiarostami's poetry is reminiscent of the later nature poems of the Persian painter-poetSohrab 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 akigo (季語, a "season word") gives much of this poetry ahaikuesque characteristic.[67]
Kiarostami's three volumes of original verse, plus his selections from classical and contemporary Persian poets, includingNima,Hafez,Rumi andSaadi, were translated into English in 2015 and were published in bilingual (Persian/English) editions by Sticking Place Books in New York.
In 1969, Kiarostami married Parvin Amir-Gholi. They had two sons, Ahmad andBahman. They divorced in 1982.[citation needed]
Kiarostami was one of the few directors who remained in Iran after the1979 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:
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. 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.[70]
Kiarostami frequently wore dark spectacles or sunglasses, which he required because of asensitivity to light.[71]
In March 2016, Kiarostami was hospitalized due to intestinal bleeding and reportedly went into a coma[72] after undergoing two operations. Sources, including aMinistry of Health and Medical Education spokesman, reported that Kiarostami was suffering fromgastrointestinal cancer.[72][73] On 3 April 2016, Reza Paydar, the director of Kiarostami's medical team, made a statement denying that the filmmaker had cancer.[73] However, in late June he left Iran for treatment in a Paris hospital,[74] where he died on 4 July 2016.[75] The week before his death, Kiarostami had been invited to join theAcademy Awards in Hollywood as part of efforts to increase the diversity of itsOscar judges.[76] Ali Ahani, Iran's ambassador to France stated that Kiarostami's body would be transferred to Iran to be buried atBehesht-e Zahra cemetery.[77] However, it was later announced that his body would be buried inLavasan, a resort town about 40 km (25 mi) northeast ofTehran, based on his own will, after it was flown back to Tehran from Paris.[78] His body was returned to Tehran'sImam Khomeini International Airport on 8 July 2016, while a crowd of Iranian film directors, actors, actresses and other artists were in Tehran airport to pay their respects.[79]
Mohammad Shirvani, a fellow filmmaker and close friend, quoted Kiarostami on his Facebook wall on 8 June 2016: "I do not believe I could stand and direct any more films. They [the medical team] destroyed it [his digestive system]." After this comment, a campaign was set up by Iranians on both Twitter and Facebook to investigate the possibility of medical error during Kiarostami's procedure. However, Ahmad Kiarostami, his eldest son, denied any medical error in his father's treatment after Shirvani's comment and said that his father's health was no cause for alarm. After Kiarostami's death, Head of the Iranian Medical Council Dr. Alireza Zali sent a letter to his French counterpart, Patrick Bouet, urging him to send Kiarostami's medical file to Iran for further investigation.[80] Nine days after Kiarostami's death, on 13 July 2016, his family issued a formal complaint of medical maltreatment through Kiarostami's personal doctor.Dariush Mehrjui, another famous Iranian cinema director, also criticized the medical team that treated Kiarostami and demanded legal action.[citation needed]
People place candles and flowers in memorial of Kiarostami atTehran'sFerdows Garden (Cinema Museum)
Martin Scorsese said he was "deeply shocked and saddened" by the news.[81] Oscar-winning Iranian film-makerAsghar 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 greater visibility for his work in his homeland. "Kiarostami gave the Iranian cinema the international credibility that it has today," he toldThe Guardian. "But his films were unfortunately not seen as much in Iran. He changed the world's cinema; he freshened it and humanized it in contrast with Hollywood's rough version."[75] Persian mystic and poetJalal 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 Kiarostami.[82]
Iranian PresidentHassan 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".[83] Foreign MinisterMohammad-Javad Zarif also said Kiarostami's death was a loss for international cinema. In a statement, French PresidentFrançois Hollande praised the director for forging "close artistic ties and deep friendships" with France.
The crowd that had gathered for this service in Paris held a vigil by theRiver Seine. They then allowed the waves of the Seine to carry away photos of Kiarostami that the crowd had left floating on the river. It was a symbolic moment of saying goodbye to a film director that many Iranians have come to passionately appreciate.[citation needed]
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 death in France. The ceremony was held at theCenter for the Intellectual Education of Children, where he began his film-making career some 40 years before.[86] Attendees held banners with the titles of his movies and pictures of his most famous posters, as they praised the support Kiarostami contributed to culture, and particularly to filmmaking in Iran. The ceremony was hosted by famous Iranian actorParviz Parastooie, and included speeches by painterAidin Aghdashlou and prize-winning film directorAsghar Farhadi, who stressed his professional abilities. He was later buried in a private ceremony in the northern Tehran town ofLavasan.[87][88][89]
In August 2020,Mania Akbari, who starred inTen, accused Kiarostami of plagiarism, stating that he edited private footage shot by Akbari into the film without her permission.[90][91] In her 2019 short filmLetter to My Mother,Amina Maher, daughter of Akbari, who also appeared inTen, said that her scenes inTen were filmed without her knowledge.[92][93] In 2022, Akbari and Maher revealed that they had been asking distributorMK2 [fr] to halt circulation of the film, to which MK2 has yet to respond. Consequently, theBritish Film Institute removedTen from a Kiarostami retrospective.[94][95]
In 2022, Akbari accused Kiarostami of raping her twice, in Tehran when she was 25 and he was about 60, and in London afterTen had premiered.[94][95]
Kiarostami has received worldwide acclaim for his work from both audiences and critics, and, in 1999, he was voted the most important Iranian film director of the 1990s by two international critics' polls.[96] Four of his films were placed in the top six of Cinematheque Ontario's Best of the '90s poll.[97] He has gained recognition from film theorists, critics, as well as peers such asJean-Luc Godard,Nanni Moretti, andChris Marker.Akira Kurosawa said of Kiarostami's films: "Words cannot describe my feelings about them ... WhenSatyajit 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."[10]Critically acclaimed directors such asMartin Scorsese have commented that "Kiarostami represents the highest level of artistry in the cinema."[98] The Austrian directorMichael Haneke had admired the work of Abbas Kiarostami as among the best of any living director.[99] In 2006,The Guardian's panel of critics ranked Kiarostami as the best contemporary non-American film director.[100]
Critics such asJonathan 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."[28] 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 ofLife and Nothing More andThrough the Olive Trees, the audience is forced to imagine the dialogue and circumstances of important scenes. InHomework andClose-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.[101]
Iranian film directorAsghar Farhadi speaking on Abbas Kiarostami's funeral, in Tehran, Iran
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, to which 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".[98]
In 2005,London Film School organized a workshop as well as the 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."[106] He was later made Honorary Associate.
In 2007, theMuseum of Modern Art andMoMA PS1 co-organized a festival of the Kiarostami's work titledAbbas Kiarostami: Image Maker.[107]
Kiarostami was a member of the advisory board ofWorld Cinema Foundation. Founded by the director Martin Scorsese, its goal is to find and reconstruct world cinema films that have been long neglected.[108]
Kiarostami has won the admiration of audiences and critics worldwide and received at least seventy awards up to the year 2000.[109] Here are some representatives:
Havres : French translation by Tayebeh Hashemi and Jean-Restom Nasser, ÉRÈS (PO&PSY); Bilingual edition (3 June 2010)ISBN978-2-7492-1223-4.
Abbas Kiarostami: Cahiers du Cinéma Livres (24 October 1997)ISBN2-86642-196-5.
Walking with the Wind (Voices and Visions in Film): English translation byAhmad Karimi-Hakkak and Michael C. Beard, Harvard Film Archive; Bilingual edition (28 February 2002)ISBN0-674-00844-8.
Kiarostami, Abbas,A Wolf on Watch (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas,With the Wind (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas,Wind and Leaf (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas,Wine (poetry by Hafez) (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas,Tears (poetry by Saadi) (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas,Water (poetry by Nima) (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2015)
Kiarostami, Abbas,Fire (poetry by Rumi) (four volumes) (Persian / English dual language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2016)
Kiarostami, Abbas,Night: Poetry from the Contemporary Persian Canon (two volumes) (Persian / English Dual Language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2016)
Kiarostami, Abbas,Night: Poetry from the Classical Persian Canon (two volumes) (Persian / English Dual Language), English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2016)
Kiarostami, Abbas,In the Shadow of Trees: The Collected Poetry of Abbas Kiarostami, English Translation by Iman Tavassoly and Paul Cronin, Sticking Place Books (2016)
Kiarostami, Abbas,Lessons with Kiarostami (edited by Paul Cronin), Sticking Place Books (2015)
Mohammed Afkhami, Sussan Babaie, Venetia Porter, Natasha Morris. "Honar: The Afkhami Collection of Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art." Phaidon Press, 2017.ISBN978-0-7148-7352-7.
^Jean-Luc Nancy, "On Evidence:Life and Nothing More, by Abbas Kiarostami,"Discourse 21.1 (1999), p.82. Also, cf., Jean Luc Nancy.Is Cinema Renewing Itself?Film-Philosophy. vol. 6 no. 15, July 2002.
^Jean-Luc Nancy, "On Evidence:Life and Nothing More, by Abbas Kiarostami,"Discourse 21.1 (1999), p.85–6.
^Jean-Luc Nancy,The Evidence of Film – Abbas Kiarostami, Yves Gevaert, Belgium 2001,ISBN2-930128-17-8
^Injy El-Kashef and Mohamed El-Assyouti (2001)."Strategic lies".Al-Ahram Weekly. Archived fromthe original on 17 February 2007. Retrieved23 February 2007.
Laurent Kretzschmar, "Is Cinema Renewing Itself?",Film-Philosophy. vol. 6 no 15, July 2002.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, "Lessons from a Master,"Chicago Reader, 14 June 1996
Tanya Shilina-Conte, "Abbas Kiarostami's 'Lessons of Darkness:’ Affect, Non-Representation, and Becoming-Imperceptible". Special Issue on "Abbas Kiarostami". Iran Namag, A Quarterly of Iranian Studies 2, no. 4 (Winter 2017/2018), University of Toronto, Canada
Silke von Berswordt-Wallrabe et al. (eds.):Abbas Kiarostami. Images, Still and Moving, exh. cat. Situation Kunst Bochum, Museum Wiesbaden, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012),ISBN978-3-7757-3436-3
Andreas Kramer, Jan Röhnert (ed.), Poetry and Film / Lyrik und Film. Abbas Kiarostami and / und Jim Jarmusch, Frankfurt am Main 2020
Godfrey Cheshire,Conversations With Kiarostami, Woodville Press, New York, 2019ISBN978-0-9994683-5-7
Godfrey Cheshire,In The Time Of Kiarostami: Writings On Iranian Cinema, Woodville Press, New York, 2022. ISBN979-8-9864463-0-1
Contemporary Persian and Classical Persian are the same language, but writers since 1900 are classified as contemporary. At one time, Persian was a common cultural language of much of the non-Arabic Islamic world. Today it is the official language ofIran,Tajikistan and one of the two official languages ofAfghanistan.
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