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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIWhile shooting Ten I was sitting in the backseat, but I didn’t interfere. Sometimes, I was following in another car, so I was not even present on the “set”, because I thought they would work better in my absence.
More Abbas Kiarostami Quotes
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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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
If you are a businessman or a politician in Iran, you can get a visa as quickly as you ask for it.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
When I find the character, I try to spend time with them and get to know them very well. Therefore my notes are not from the character that I had in my mind before, but are instead based on the people I’ve met in real life.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I thought that I had been asked every kind of question possible.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
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 KIAROSTAMI -
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 -
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 -
Unfortunately, cinema critics are very few in America, 400-500 people, but there are more critics of Iran.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
Silence doesn’t seem heavy or difficult.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
I think Woody Allen is Woody Allen, and no matter where he goes he still makes his Woody Allen films.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
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.
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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI -
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 -
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.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI