Ten by Abbass Kiarostami.pdf

Geoff Andrew

•

Publishing

F rst published in 2005 by the

British Film Institute

21 Stephen Street, London W1T 1 LN

The British Film Institute's purpose is to

champion moving image culture in all its

richness and diversity across the UK, for the

benefit of as wide an audience as possible,

and to create and encourage debate.

Ser,es design by Andrew Barr

& Collis Clements Associates

Typeset in Italian Garamond

and Swiss 721 BT by

D R Bungay Associates,

Burghfi Id, Berks

rinted in Great Britain by Cromwell Press

Brit'sh Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

ISBN 0-85170-Q69-X

Contents

Acknowledgments 6

1 Introduction: Something

Small 7

2 World Cinema at the Turn of the

Millennium 11

3 Iranian Cinema: A Special

Case 14

4 Abbas Kiarostami: A Very Special

Case 21

5 Kiarostami and Digital:

ABC Africa 31

610 35

7 A Lesson for Others 70

8 A Lesson for Kiarostami 72

9 Poetry and Motion 75

10 Conclusion: The Start of

Something Big? 79

Notes 81

Credits 87

BFI MODERN CLASSICS

Acknowledgments

W'hile this book represents a distillation of my own thoughts and feelings

about 10, it is, as always, partly the product of much informal discussion

over the years with friends, colleagues and other Kiarostami fans. For

insights, encouragement or help, 1'd like to thank Gilbert Adair, Nick

Bradshaw, Tom Charity, Michel Demopoulos, Alberto Elena, Simon Field,

Thierry Fremaux, Jane Giles, Rose Issa, Nick James, Tareque Masud,

Laura Mulvey, James Quandt, Tony Rayns,Jonathan Romney, Jonathan

Rosenbaum, Walter Salles, Peter Scarlet, David Sin, Leopolda Soto,

David Thompson, Sheila Whitaker and Deborah Young. I should also like,

once again, to thank my mother Olive and my wife Ane for their patience

in dealing with my sometimes reclusive and obsessively single-minded

behaviour during the preparation and writing of this book.

Since its publication coincides with a major London retrospective of

Kiarostami's work, I should also thank Jim Hamilton, Julie Pearce,

Waltraud Loges and other colleagues at the National Film Theatre;

Margaret Deriaz, Erich Sargeant, Heather Stewart, Anthony Minghella

and others at the British Film Institute; and, ofcourse, Rob White - who

proved an extremely sympathetic and helpful editor - and others at BFI

Publishing. Their work is greatly appreciated.

This book could not have been written without further help from other

Kiarostami aficionados. I should particularly like to thank Farhad and

Majaneh Hakimzadeh of the Iran Heritage Foundation in London;

Monica Donati and Marin Karmitz at MK2 in Paris; Mohammad Attebai

in Tehran; and Elisa Resegotti, Alberto Barbera and Maria Grazia Girotto

for their help at the Suile Strade di Kiarostami exhibition in Turin.

Finally, I should very much like to thank Mania Akbari and, most

especially, Abbas Kiarostami for their generous help in various matters.

The book is dedicated to my wife Ane - who has watched, talked, lived

and breathed Kiarostarni with me for some years now - and to Abbas, who

has taught me to look at cinema and life anew.

Unless stated otherwise, all quotations derive from interviews conducted

by myself. The one with Mania Akbari took place in London in September

2002; those with Abbas Kiarostami took place in June 1999 in London (on

stage at the National Film Theatre); in May 2002 in Cannes; in September

2003 in Turin; inJanuary 2004 in London (one of them on stage at the

Victoria and Albert Museum); and in May 2004 in Cannes.

1 Introduction: Something Small

The reason I like this film is that even I, the film-maker, get confused as to

which parts were fiction and which documentary. It's as if the film doesn't

belong to me, as if it had made itself; the main character was so strong, it

was I who was being told what should be done. And when I saw the film, I

realised it was not an artificial creation, but different; it increased my

responsibility as a film-maker. Cinema is no longer the panoramic experience

it once was, with big budgets; cinema is - or ought to be - about analysing

indi idual human experience, and how you can find yourself within that

subjectivity. After making this film, I realised how I could identify with each of

the characters, and how much of myself was in them

Abbas Kiarostami l

Admirers of Kiarostami's 10 might imagine that the above quotation refers

to that film. Actually, although the words are certainly applicable to 10, the

Iranian film-maker spoke them some years before he made it; that he was

discussing Close- Up (Namay-e nazdtk, 1990) suggests there is a degree of

consistency in his work. And as soon as one examines the progress of

Kiarostami's career in any detail, one gets an unusually strong impression

of organic growth; as he himself has said, 'Everyone of my films gives

birth to another. '2

And that's crucial to a proper understanding of Kiarostami's

achievements as a film-maker and, indeed, as an artist. All his films are

perfectly comprehensible on their own terms as individual artefacts, but

each becomes not only more accessible but richer and more resonant if

Seriously playful: Abbas

Kiarostami and Amin Maher

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