Abbas Kiarostami - the great poet of Iranian cinema

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Abbas Kiarostami is an Iranian director who has made a number of highly artistic poetic films widely known in Iran.

The film "The Taste of Cherry", directed by Abbas Kiarostami in 1997, brought the director worldwide fame. Abbas has also earned many prestigious international film awards during his tenure.

The Creative Journey: Getting Started

Abbas Kiarostami was born on June 22, 1940 in the capital of Iran, Tehran. Since childhood, Kiarostami has been fond of painting. At the age of 18, the guy even won an art competition. Passion for painting prompted him to leave home and enter the School of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran. Abbas chose to specialize in graphic design and drawing. In order to have something to live on, while studying, Kiarostami worked as a traffic controller.

In the 1960s, Abbas also made a living from advertising. He drew posters and came up with creative ideas for advertising campaigns. During the period from 1962 to 1966, the director made about 150 commercials for Iranian television.

The next step in the guy's career was creating titles for movies and illustrations for children's books.

Cinema

In the 1970syears Kiarostami began to direct his own films. He worked very productively - Abbas Kiarostami released more than 40 films during this period of his life. Films in this category are not only feature films, but also documentaries, both full-length and short.

For the first time as a director, a man was talked about after the release of his "Coker trilogy". It includes the films "Where is the house of a friend?", "And life goes on", "Through the olives". The ribbons tie together the scene - the small village of Koker in northern Iran.

In 1990, the picture "Close-up" about a swindler who pretended to be a filmmaker was released. The protagonist's trial had to decide whether to consider his actions a mere crime or an act of creativity.

Cherry flavor

The director himself did not consider the first film part of a trilogy. In his opinion, the picture "A Taste of Cherry", shot by him in 1997, was more suitable for the second and third films. In his opinion, for all these works, it was not so much the place of action that was common, but the main idea - the value of life.

In "A Taste of Cherry", Abbas touches on the topic of suicide and how reasonable and expedient it is. The picture was warmly received by critics around the world and brought the director the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Global recognition

In 1990 Abbas Kiarostami's film "The Wind Will Carry Us" was released. The film is included in the program of the Venice Film Festival. The point in this work of the director is about how the ideas about life differ between urban and rural residents. The concepts of labor, gender equality, and progress are compared. A feature of the film was that some of the characters are not shown in the frame. Only their voices are heard. The jury of the film festival awarded the film with the Silver Lion prize.

The next significant award awaited Abbas in 2000. In the city of San Francisco, the director was awarded the Akira Kurosawa Award for Directorial Achievement. Kiarostami did not keep the reward for himself. He gave it to Iranian actor Behruz Vosugi to express his gratitude to him for what he does for Iranian cinema.

Abbas' new creation, Five, was released in 2003. In this work, the creators did without dialogues and characters. The film consists of five excerpts of filming nature. The action takes place on the coast of the Caspian Sea.

The film "Copy is True" appeared before the public in 2010. Abbas Kiarostami filmed it outside of Iran, which is not typical for a director. In the picture, a French woman and a Briton face each other. "The copy is true" tells about the consequences of this collision. The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. As a result, the actress Juliette Binoche, who played the main role in this film, received the award.

The new work of the author - the film "Like someone in love" was released in 2010. Received mixed reviews. Filmed in Japan.

Latestwork

In the last years of his life, Abbas preferred to deal with documentaries and mockumentary films.

The work "Alphabet: Africa" tells us about the director's journey through Africa. The film "Ten" is the story of ten girls, passengers of a minibus, built in the form of a conversation between them and the driver. Among them are both a prostitute and a deeply religious woman.

The director also shot one of the short stories for the almanac "Ticket". Together with him, Ermano Olmi and Ken Loach worked on the almanac. The action in the novel takes place in a carriage of a European fast train.

Kiarostami has had a significant impact on many young filmmakers in Iran and around the world. Dissident director Jafar Panahi, based on the scenario of Abbas, shot the film "Crimson Gold" in 2003. The picture aroused great interest at the Cannes Film Festival, but was banned from showing in Iran itself.

In recent years, Abbas has become interested in photography. Photo exhibitions were held in the largest world capitals, where Abbas Kiarostami exhibited his works to the public. The photographs he took were mostly landscapes. They have fields, mountains, trees. As in his other works, in the photo Kiarostami tried to reflect images of eternity and time.

Death

Abbas Kiarostami died on July 4, 2016 in Paris. At this point he was 76 years old. The cause of death is believed to be a mistake by Iranian doctors who performed an operation on the famous director to removepolyps in the intestine. After this intervention, Kiarostami developed complications and sepsis. He went to France for treatment, but it was too late. In France, the director was diagnosed with cancer. The funeral was organized in Tehran.