Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can’t limit it to one particular culture.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIFilm is very much a universal and common voice, and we can’t limit it to one particular culture.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIClose-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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIThere 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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIIt seems that film-makers are being divided between those working in digital and those who are not. I think it’s not something predetermined – it all depends on what project we have in mind, and on that basis we choose the medium.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIMy way of expression is full of complications and mystery because that’s my perception of life.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIGood 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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIThe 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 KIAROSTAMIWhen 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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIA digital camera does have many advantages and I was a believer that digital video would be a big influence on film-making.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMII don’t generally derive my stories from novels. I try to turn into film things I have felt or experienced.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMII 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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMII didn’t just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIIn my films, I try to give people as little information as possible, which is still much more than what they get in real life. I feel that they should be grateful for the little bit of information I give them.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIThose same people, when they leave the theater, when they look behind the curtains they are curious about their neighbors, they can guess if their neighbors are siblings or a couple, how old they are, what their occupation is.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIIn my mind, there isn’t as much of a distinction between documentary and fiction as there is between a good movie and a bad one.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIA movie is about human beings, about humanity.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI