Whether you consider me a master filmmaker or not, I do it with my intuition and my vision, my experience as a storyteller.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIUnfortunately, cinema critics are very few in America, 400-500 people, but there are more critics of Iran.
More Abbas Kiarostami Quotes
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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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can’t limit it to one particular culture.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I have no advice for anyone on how to live.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
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 -
Silence doesn’t seem heavy or difficult.
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Close-Up has affected later films that I’ve made.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I think violence can never be justified. At the same time, nobody’s culture or beliefs should be insulted, that’s not something I can accept either. But I cannot justify or accept any violence at all.
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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.
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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
You’ve noticed that same joke told by two different people, once works, and the other time doesn’t, simply because how the person edits it. The silences, the pauses, what they neglect, what they emphasize – all of this matters.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
Maybe more than a teller, I am a story listener. I really enjoy listening to stories. I remember them and keep them in my mind. All of my films are a collection of small stories that have been told to me.
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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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI