Abbas Kiarostami
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Even/Odd Partners with the Kiarostami Foundation on an Ongoing Product Collection
Creative studio and production company Even/Odd has partnered with the Kiarostami Foundation on a special product collection that celebrates the legendary Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. The collection currently features three items: a 40-page graphic novel and activity book that reimagines Kairostami’s 1987 film Where Is the Friend’s House?, a small-batch mulberry jam inspired by his 1997 film Taste of Cherry and reprints of original posters designed by the filmmaker for Friend’s House, Certified Copy (2010) and A Wedding Suit (1976). These products are the first of many that the California-based company (founded by Mohammad Gorjestani, a 25 New Faces of […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 27, 2023 -
Watch: Martin Scorsese Remembers Abbas Kiarostami
At New York’s School for the Visual Arts last Friday, Martin Scorsese spoke in remembrance of the late Abbas Kiarostami. He’d known him for some 14 years, and in this speech recalls both the last time they met — when they spoke about collaborating on a project next year — and the first, when they were both serving as Cinefondation honorary presidents at Cannes in 2002. Of Close-Up, he recalls how the film helped him “see the world again.”
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 18, 2016 -
Watch: “Kiarostami: The Anti-Supercut Artist”
Kevin B. Lee, Chief Video Essayist at Fandor, set out to make a Abbas Kiarostami video tribute after his passing last week. Lee created this video to display his own learning process, realizing that Kiarostami’s films actively contrast with the deconstructive video essay form.
by Marc Nemcik on Jul 12, 2016 -
Cinema Great Abbas Kiarostami Dies at 76
One of cinema’s great masters, Abbas Kiarostami, whose pictures could be intimate and human-scaled while also self-reflexive and bracingly political, died today in Paris. The Palme D’Or winner — for Taste of Cherry in 1997 — passed away following treatment for gasto-intestinal cancer. Speaking to The Guardian, director Asghar Farhadi said, “He wasn’t just a film-maker, he was a modern mystic, both in his cinema and his private life. He definitely paved ways for others and influenced a great deal of people. It’s not just the world of cinema that has lost a great man; the whole world has lost […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 4, 2016 -
Learning by Making with Abbas Kiarostami
Lucid Dreaming. Alchemy. These are two unlikely explanations to consider for what I’m still not sure ever could have happened. As one of 52 filmmakers invited to participate in the Taller de filmando en Cuba con Abbas Kiarostami, I am not alone in describing the workshop as being similar to a somnambulistic experience. We bore witness to unexpected swathes of time that, along with illuminating encounters, metamorphosed into stories seemingly cut from the ethereal sun-drenched humidity and slow pace of our environs. A welcome retreat for both visitors and filmmakers alike, the Escuela de Cine y Television sits atop a […]
by Cameron Bruce Nelson on Feb 29, 2016 -
They Should Be Grateful: An Interview with Abbas Kiarostami
There is a reassuring softness to the touch of Abbas Kiarostami’s films. At a moment in which so many of cinema’s reigning masters exhibit a violently firm command of their work (Von Trier, Haneke), Kiarostami seems happily inclined to set his viewers free through the gauzy mazes of nuance that make up his cinema, encouraging them to come to their own conclusions. That’s not to say that Kiarostami’s hand isn’t as exacting as that of his perpetual Cannes competitors, but rather, that Kiarostami’s careful grip manifests itself in a carefully light touch. That light touch can be frustrating to those […]
by Zachary Wigon on Feb 13, 2013 -
VIFF Critics Notebook #2
The Dragons & Tigers section has been the richest part of VIFF’s legacy, dating back to 1994. Each year, the Award for Young Cinema has highlighted an as yet unrecognized talent of East Asian cinema. This year the Dragons & Tigers jury was made up of Shinozaki Makoto, Joao Pedro Rodrigues and Chuck Stephens. I was able to see a few films from the competition, including the winner Emperor Visits the Hell, directed by Li Luo. An often perplexing, but always interesting film, Li’s movie transports a story (three chapters) from the Ming Dynast novel Journey to the West to […]
by Adam Cook on Oct 15, 2012 -
A Trans-Generational Triple Feature at NYFF 50
It was not until the very close of Michael Haneke’s laurel-laden Amour that I came to a pleasantly odd realization. Without any foresight, I had managed to stumble upon the perfect trans-generational triple feature—perhaps not just at the New York Film Festival, but in the grander scheme as well. At first blush, the Tokyo-set Like Someone in Love, New York-based Frances Ha, and the claustrophobic Parisian quarters of Amour have as much in common as, well, an Eastern social order, a misguided American woman, and a shackled octogenarian couple could. But a closer look reveals a glaringly common thread. […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Oct 11, 2012 -
HOSSEIN KESHAVARZ, “DOG SWEAT”
Earnest and terse, Dog Sweat is a movie that feels like it was made by the skin of its teeth, pulled together through sheer force of will; what’s at stake for the filmmaker becomes an indelible part of the experience for the audience in a way few films accomplish. A sprawling drama with multiple protagonists, tracks several young Iranian adults who in their own quiet, and in some cases not so quiet ways, are running up against the rampant oppression of an authoritarian theocracy and a older generation grown stale with compromise, who have grown complacent about lowered expectations for […]
by Brandon Harris on Nov 17, 2011 -
THE 11TH TOKYO FILMEX
The 11th Tokyo Filmex opened with Apitchatpong Weerasethakul’s beguiling Uncle Boonmee, Who Can Recall His Past Lives (pictured left). The opening film set the tenor of the week to come — experimental, personal, willing to take chances. At the opening ceremony festival director Kanako Hayashi gave a shout out to the man who pretty much put Japanese film on the Western critical map, Donald Richie. All eyes in the audience turned toward the frail, but unbowed, man who graciously acknowledged the accolades. Over the last year the 86-year old Richie has been conspicuously absent from the film scene that he […]
by Nicholas Vroman on Feb 26, 2011
