Whether you consider me a master filmmaker or not, I do it with my intuition and my vision, my experience as a storyteller.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMIMy car is my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me. We’re in the most comfortable seats because we’re not facing each other, but sitting side by side.
More Abbas Kiarostami Quotes
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While 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.
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I think, just as footballers play better at home, maybe film-makers, too, create better at home, even though the rules of football are the same wherever you go.
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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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As soon as people enter a theater they must become moron consumers who must be fed information.
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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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As long as I take the responsibility of the choice, I have to make the choice that is as right as possible.
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We are nothing but a link between our culture and what we can actually produce.
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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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It 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.
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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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This was pointed out to me by somebody who referred to the paintings of Rembrandt and his use of light: some elements are highlighted while others are obscured or even pushed back into the dark.
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Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.
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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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Close-Up has affected later films that I’ve made.
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I think that if you’re a digital thinker, you can use a digital camera.
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The only thing that I can do is hold a mirror in front of men and women, in front of the viewer in the theater, to reflect. There is nothing but reflection that I could intend to offer the viewer of the film.
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Anything I’ve not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.
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I think Woody Allen is Woody Allen, and no matter where he goes he still makes his Woody Allen films.
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Therefore, 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.
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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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A movie is about human beings, about humanity.
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Unfortunately, cinema critics are very few in America, 400-500 people, but there are more critics of Iran.
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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’m still very grateful to digital cameras in general, but I didn’t have this feeling with the RED one.
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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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If it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. This is a rule of nature. I think if I had left my country, I would be the same as the tree.
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI