Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami (born 22 June 1940) is an internationally acclaimed Iranian film director, screenwriter, and film producer.An active filmmaker since 1970, Kiarostami has been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy, A Taste of Cherry, and The Wind Will Carry Us.

Abbas Kiarostami

Kiarostami has worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, art director and producer and has designed credit titles and publicity material. He is also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer.

Kiarostami is part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and includes pioneering directors such as Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Bahram Beizai, and Parviz Kimiavi. The filmmakers share many common techniques including the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues.

Kiarostami has a reputation for using child protagonists, for documentary style narrative films, for stories that take place in rural villages, and for conversations that unfold inside cars, using stationary mounted cameras. He is also known for his use of contemporary Iranian poetry in the dialogue, titles, and themes of his films.

Early Life and Background

Kiarostami was born in Tehran. His first artistic experience was painting, which he continued into his late teens, winning a painting competition at the age of eighteen shortly before he left home to study at the Tehran University School of Fine Arts. There he majored in painting and graphic design, and supported his degree by working as a traffic policeman. As a painter, designer, and illustrator, Kiarostami worked in advertising in the 1960s, designing posters and creating commercials. Between 1962 and 1966, he shot around 150 advertisements for Iranian television. Towards the late 1960s, he began creating credit titles for films (including Gheysar by Masoud Kimiai) and illustrating children's books.

In 1969, Abbas married Parvin Amir-Gholi but later divorced her in 1982. They had two sons from the marriage; Ahmad born in 1971 and Bahman in 1978 respectively. At the age of fifteen, Bahman Kiarostami became a director and cinematographer by directing a documentary Journey to the Land of the Traveller in 1993.

Kiarostami remained in Iran after the 1979 revolution, when many of his fellow Iranian filmmakers and directors fled to the west, and he believes that it was one of the most important decisions of his career. He has stated that his permanent base in Iran and his national identity have consolidated his ability as a filmmaker:

When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground, and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. And 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

Because of his residency in Iran he has faced travel limitations and visa problems. In 2002, he was denied a U.S. visa to attend New York Film Festival. In 2009, he was invited to produce Mozart's Così fan tutte for the prestigious English National Opera (ENO) but in May 2009, and only a few weeks before the start date, the British Embassy in Tehran had not issued a visa to Mr. Kiarostami, and in protest to the illogical visa process and disrespectful treatment of Iranian citizens by British Embassy, Mr. Kiarostami resigned from directing.

Kiarostami frequently appears wearing dark-lensed spectacles or sunglasses. He wears them for medical reasons due to a sensitivity to light.

In 2000, at the San Francisco Film Festival award ceremony, Kiarostami surprised everyone by giving away his Akira Kurosawa Prize for lifetime achievement in directing to veteran Iranian actor Behrooz Vossoughi for his contribution to Iranian Cinema.

Honors and Awards

Kiarostami accepting a lifetime achievement award from Martin Scorsese in Marrakech International Film Festival.

Kiarostami has won the admiration of audiences and critics worldwide and received at least seventy awards up to the year 2000. Here are some representatives:

• Prix Roberto Rossellini (1992)
• Prix Cine Decouvertes (1992)
• François Truffaut Award (1993)
• Pier Paolo Pasolini Award (1995)
• Federico Fellini Gold Medal, UNESCO (1997)
• Palme d'Or, Cannes Festival (1997)
• Honorary Golden Alexander Prize, Greece (1999)
• Silver Lion, Venice Film Festival (1999)
• Akira Kurosawa Award (2000)
• Honorary doctorate, École Normale Supérieure (2003)
• Konrad Wolf Prize (2003)
• President of the Jury for Caméra d'Or Award, Cannes Festival (2005)
• Fellowship of the British Film Institute (2005)
• Gold Leopard of Honor, Locarno film festival (2005)
• Prix Henri-Langlois Prize (2006)
• Honorary doctorate, University of Toulouse (2007)
• World's great masters, Kolkata International Film Festival (2007)
• Glory to the Filmmaker Award, Venice Film Festival (2008)
• Cup of Jamshid Award (2008)

Martin Scorsese and Abbas Kiarostami

Filmography

• 1970 The Bread and Alley
• 1972 Breaktime
• 1973 The Experience
• 1974 The Traveller
• 1975 So Can I
• 1975 Two Solutions for One Problem
• 1976 Colors
• 1976 A Wedding Suit
• 1977 How to Make Use of Leisure Time: Painting
• 1977 The Report
• 1977 Tribute to the Teachers
• 1978 Solution
• 1979 First Case, Second Case
• 1980 Dental Hygiene
• 1981 Orderly or Disorderly
• 1982 The Chorus
• 1983 Fellow Citizen
• 1983 Toothache
• 1984 First Graders
• 1987 Where Is the Friend's Home
• 1987 The Key
• 1989 Homework
• 1990 Close-Up
• 1991 Life, and Nothing More...
• 1993 Journey to the Land of the Traveller
• 1994 Through the Olive Trees
• 1994 The Journey
• 1995 The White Balloon
• 1995 A propos de Nice, la suite
• 1996 Lumiere and Company
• 1997 The Birth of Light
• 1997 Taste of Cherry
• 1999 The Wind Will Carry Us
• 1999 Willow and Wind
• 2001 ABC Africa
• 2002 Ten
• 2002 The Deserted Station
• 2003 Crimson Gold
• 2003 Five
• 2003 Ten Minutes Older
• 2004 10 on Ten
• 2005 The Roads of Kiarostami
• 2005 Tickets
• 2007 Kojast jaye residan
• 2007 Chacun son cinema
• 2008 Certified Copy

Books

• Abbas Kiarostami, Abbas Kiarostami: Cahiers du Cinema Livres (24 October 1997)
• Abbas Kiarostami, Walking with the Wind (Voices and Visions in Film): English translation by Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak and Michael C. Beard, Harvard Film Archive; Bilingual edition (28 February 2002).
• Abbas Kiarostami, 10 (ten): Cahiers du Cinema Livres (5 September 2002).
• Abbas Kiarostami, Nahal Tajadod and Jean-Claude Carrière Avec le vent: P.O.L. (5 May 2002).
• Abbas Kiarostami, Le vent nous emportera: Cahiers du Cinema Livres (5 September 2002).
• Abbas Kiarostami, La Lettre du Cinema: P.O.L. (12 December 1997).