I wasn’t searching for a common denominator – I started wondering about the challenge of working in other cultures. What I reached was the sudden acknowledgment of the universal aspect of filmmaking.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMITherefore, when you see the end result, it’s difficult to see who’s the director, me or them. Ultimately, everything belongs to the actors – we just manage the situation.
More Abbas Kiarostami Quotes
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It’s very true that non-actors feel more comfortable in front of a digital camera, without the lights and the large crowd around them, and we arrive at much more intimate moments with them.
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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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I never really learned photography.
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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 do think that we are sometimes, as directors, guilty of portraying or asking our actors to behave in certain ways that are perhaps not very morally acceptable. I’m not the only one.
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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 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.
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People have curiosity, they have intelligence, they have interest in understanding their peers. But producers and directors of cinema have decided that the seats in the theaters have been made to transform people’s minds to lazy minds.
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I remember when I came out of an exam thinking I had done well and then I had a clue that maybe one answer was wrong, I remembered that I rather stop knowing, stop thinking about it, appreciating life instead.
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I really haven’t seen The Report in a long time. I don’t have a copy, but I’ll have to see it again. I think it would be good to put both these men next to each other.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I only make notes, I don’t write dialogues in full. And the notes are very much based on my knowledge of person.
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I spend a lot of time doing carpentry. Sometimes there is nothing that gives me the contentment that sawing a piece of wood does.
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I thought that choosing a non-professional was a condition for me, because it would allow Juliette to have a less-professional way of acting. It would challenge her performance as a professional actress.
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Using non-actors has its own rules and really requires that you allow them to do their own thing.
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A work of art doesn’t exist outside the perception of the audience.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI






