A work of art doesn’t exist outside the perception of the audience.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMII’m not sure that my films show the reality of life in Iran; we show different aspects of life. Iran is a very extensive and expansive place, and sometimes, even for us who live there, some of the realities are very hard to comprehend.
More Abbas Kiarostami Quotes
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My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.
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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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Whether you consider me a master filmmaker or not, I do it with my intuition and my vision, my experience as a storyteller.
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I think being someone in love is so hard to define, so temporary, because retrospectively we often deny the state in which we were in love.
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Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can’t limit it to one particular culture.
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Close-Up is a very particular film in my oeuvre. It’s a film that was made in a very particular way; mainly because I didn’t really have the time to think about how to go about making the film.
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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.
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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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Good cinema is what we can believe and bad cinema is what we can’t believe. What you see and believe in is very much what I’m interested in.
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Directors don’t always create, they can also destroy with too many demands.
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Close-Up has affected later films that I’ve made.
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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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If I do continue to have the opportunity to work in Iran, that’s very much what I’d prefer to do.
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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 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
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI