I have received the digital camera as a blessing. It has really changed my life as a filmmaker, because I don’t use my camera anymore as a camera. I don’t feel it as a camera.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIIt’s not so much a question of whether we’ve shot it through 35mm or digital video; what is important is whether the audience accepts it as real.
More Abbas Kiarostami Quotes
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I am still very surprised that I managed to make that film [Close Up]. When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience.
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I think I really produce my best work in Iran.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
The digital camera has given me total freedom and a different way of filming.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I never really learned photography.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
The Iranian government as a whole has no relationship with my films. They’re not particularly interested, perhaps this kind of cinema is not very interesting to them.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
It’s not so much a question of whether we’ve shot it through 35mm or digital video; what is important is whether the audience accepts it as real.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I have no advice for anyone on how to live.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I’ve often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it’s inside a frame.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
This [the earthquake] was a very big influence on me, and the issue of life and death from then on does recur in my films.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
In my experience as a director, I think there is obviously something of the way men – maybe that’s a common point with Shirin – the way men see women in the film, and the way these two characters see each other.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
Cinema gives you the opportunity to be both a grandparent and a grandchild whereas in life you cannot be both at the same time.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I did not have a script [of Close Up]. I made notes in the evenings and we filmed during the day over 40 days.I didn’t sleep a wink for those 40 nights.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
Directors don’t always create, they can also destroy with too many demands.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic; so I have my doubts.
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I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI






