Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIIf we’re not going to take full advantage of digital, then 35mm is a better medium. Especially for shooting dramas – I have no problem with 35mm.
More Abbas Kiarostami Quotes
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I don’t have very complete scripts for my films. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character who’s in my mind in reality.
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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.
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There are certainties in existence, but love is something much harder to define than light and dark, life and death. I think saying you are “like” someone in love sounds right.
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In order to be able to cooperate with a child, you have to come down to below their level in order to communicate with them. Actors are also like children.
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It’s true that the best way of knowing yourself is to put yourself into different situations.
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When I’m in the process of making a movie I’m not thinking about the finished result, and whether people have to see it once or more than once, and what the reaction to it will be. I just make it, and then I live with the consequences.
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I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.
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The one-word cinema wasn’t possible for me anymore. I’d hit a wall, a dead end. Therefore I thought I’d turn back.
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I think that in life, being is nothing but an illusion. If we acknowledge that and accept the fact that we are in between states, that we are moving, and this movement is the nature of our lives
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We don’t look at each other [in the car], but instead do so only when we want to. We’re allowed to look around without appearing rude. We have a big screen in front of us and side views.
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I think it was [Jean-Luc] Godard who said that life is nothing but a bad copy of film, but then our ambition must be to make better films and better shapes of forms that are given in life.
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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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If you are a businessman or a politician in Iran, you can get a visa as quickly as you ask for it.
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As long as I take the responsibility of the choice, I have to make the choice that is as right as possible.
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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.
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The film [Close Up] made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn’t directing the actors so much as being directed by them. So it was a very particular film.
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I think that if you’re a digital thinker, you can use a digital camera.
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There were years when Hitchcock was like a master to me, but now I think he’s so artificial. I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I’m not impressed by any technicality.
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I believe there’s only good cinema and bad cinema.
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I think life is so difficult to catch, it’s so furtive, that a copy, a film, can in no way catch it and represent it.
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Everybody knows that I am not usually patient enough to actually sit down and watch one of my own films from the beginning to the end – I never do.
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.
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I was mentioning with the digital camera, maybe this new fashion of filmmaking gives a closer look of what life may be like. But it’s still nothing but a copy.
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 -
With the RED, I didn’t have this impression at all. I felt that it was as heavy as a film camera. Having this great crew, with the DP and his assistants, I found it making as much of an impression as a very big film camera.
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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