Films byTexts by Abbas Kiarostami
FILM
Tribute to the Teachers
Abbas Kiarostami, 1977, 20’

An assignment from Iran’s Ministry of Education, this documentary from the last years of the Pahlavi dynasty includes interviews with officials who predictably praise teaching as a sacred, noble, and honorable profession.

FILM
Toothache
Abbas Kiarostami, 1980, 25’

Though much of this film is a straightforward lecture on dental hygiene delivered by a dentist facing the camera, it still manages to be persuasively Kiarostami-esque in its description of young Mohammad-Reza’s life at home and at school before he falls prey to tooth woes.

FILM
The Colors
Abbas Kiarostami, 1976, 16’

Ostensibly a film for children, this picture book essay about the range of hues that brighten our world has the air of a delightfully playful formalistic exercise.

FILM
Two Solutions for One Problem
Abbas Kiarostami, 1975, 5’

This simple moral tale seems to prefigure Where Is the Friend’s House? Two young schoolboys, Dara and Nader, are friends until Dara returns Nader’s notebook torn and Nader retaliates in kind, setting off an escalating battle that leads to destruction of property and physical injury.

FILM
So Can I
Abbas Kiarostami, 1975, 4’

The first of Kiarostami’s films made for, rather than about, children was an experiment in combining live action and animation, done in collaboration with animator Nafiseh Riahi.

FILM
The Bread and Alley
Abbas Kiarostami, 1970, 10’

A little boy makes his way home clutching a loaf of bread. In an alley, a stray dog blocks his path.

 

“The mother of all my films.”
Abbas Kiarostami

 

FILM
Abbas Kiarostami, 2008, 92’

The faces of a hundred and fourteen famous Iranian actresses and French star Juliette Binoche as they watch a filmed adaptation of a tragic twelfth-century romance by Nezami Ganjavi in a movie theater.

 

Manifesto NL EN
15.05.2019

Ik geloof in een vorm van cinema die meer mogelijkheden en tijd biedt aan zijn toeschouwers. Een halfgecreëerde cinema, een onvoltooide cinema die door de creatieve geest van het publiek voltooid raakt en zo leidt tot honderden films. Het behoort toe aan de toeschouwers en stemt overeen met hun eigen wereld.

Manifesto NL EN
15.05.2019

I believe in a type of cinema that gives greater possibilities and time to its audience. A half-created cinema, an unfinished cinema that attains completion through the creative spirit of the audience, so resulting in hundreds of films. It belongs to the members of that audience and corresponds to their own world.

FILM
Through the Olive Trees
Abbas Kiarostami, 1994, 103’

Kiarostami takes meta-narrative gamesmanship to masterful new heights in the final installment of his celebrated Koker trilogy.

FILM
Life and Nothing More...
Abbas Kiarostami, 1992, 95’

In June 1990, an earthquake of catastrophic proportions struck Northern Iran, killing tens of thousands of people and causing untold damage.

FILM
Close-Up
Abbas Kiarostami, 1990, 98’

Based upon a peculiar news story Kiarostami stumbled upon, the film follows an unemployed youth from Teheran called Hossein Sabzian, as he convinces an entire family that he is the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

FILM
Taste of Cherry
Abbas Kiarostami, 1997, 95’

An Iranian man drives his car in search of someone who will quietly bury him under a cherry tree after he commits suicide.

 

FILM
Ten
Abbas Kiarostami, 2002, 91’

“For decades, classical film theory pondered on the appropriate metaphor to explain the screen: a window or a frame? Was the screen a window on the world, therefore reality captured, or, a frame, reality constructed, a painting and its frame?

FILM
Where Is the Friend’s Home?
Abbas Kiarostami, 1987, 87’

Eight-year-old Ahmed has mistakenly taken his friend Mohammad’s notebook. He wants to return it, or else his friend will be expelled from school. The boy determinedly sets out to find Mohammad’s home in the neighbouring village.