Contemporary Film Directors

Expanded Second Edition

Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, Jonathan Rosenbaum

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780252050534
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Before his death in 2016, Abbas Kiarostami wrote or directed more than thirty films in a career that mirrored Iranian cinema's rise as an international force. His 1997 feature Taste of Cherry made him the first Iranian filmmaker to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Critics' polls continue to place Close-Up (1990) and Through the Olive Trees (1994) among the masterpieces of world cinema. Yet Kiarostami's naturalistic impulses and winding complexity made him one of the most divisive—if influential—filmmakers of his time.

In this expanded second edition, award-winning Iranian filmmaker Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum renew their illuminating cross-cultural dialogue on Kiarostami's work. The pair chart the filmmaker's late-in-life turn toward art galleries, museums, still photography, and installations. They also bring their distinct but complementary perspectives to a new conversation on the experimental film Shirin. Finally, Rosenbaum offers an essay on watching Kiarostami at home while Saeed-Vafa conducts a deeply personal interview with the director on his career and his final feature, Like Someone in Love.

Index

A.B.C. Africa (2001), 5, 37–40, 119–23, 131, 140, 145, 171; audience role in, 40; commission for, 38, 121–22; darkness as element in, 16, 76, 119–20; as digital video, 37, 39, 83, 120–21; documentary elements of, 38, 83–84, 119; ethical issues in, 39, 40, 74, 121, 122, 123; final scene of, 87, 101, 121, 122–23; languages in, 37, 40; location of, 37, 123; narrative pace of, 21; public rejection of, 83; ruins as metaphor in, 59; self-reference in, 13, 65; social class in, 71; soundtrack of, 39–40, 122–23; women and children depicted in, 70

“Address” (Sepehry), 51–52

Afsharpanah, Kurosh, 118

Aghdashlu, Shohreh, 118, 147

Ahankhanh family, 16–17, 54, 65, 66, 67, 87

Ahmadpour, Ahmad, 25

Ahmadpour, Babak, 25

AIDS, in Africa, 38

Akrami, Jamsheed, 130, 181

Amour (Haneke), 157

Anti-intellectualism, 96–97

Antonioni, Michelangelo, 46, 92, 96

The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf), 49

The Arabian Nights, 58

Armstrong, Louis, 7, 28, 32, 109

Around Five (2005), 143, 175

Artforum, 90, 92

Art Institute of Chicago, Film Center, 28–29, 47, 51, 95, 143–44

Assayas, Olivier, 146

Attar, Farid Ud-Din, 58

Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson), 46

“Autumn Leaves” (Prevert-Mercer-Kosma), 40, 122, 123, 139–40

Bani-Etemad, Rakhshan, 49, 69

Baran (Majidi), 69

The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo), 62

Bayzaie, Bahram, 9, 50, 51, 55, 57, 69

Bejar, Morris, 56

Benning, James, 130

Bergman, Ingmar, 46

Bertolucci, Bernardo, 42n

Binoche, Juliette, 127, 133, 134, 147

T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Abbas Kiarostami
• Abbas Kiarostami
• A Dialogue between the Authors
• Interviews with Abbas Kiarostami
• A Dialogue about Shirin
• New Dialogue: Fifteen Years Later
• Watching Kiarostami Films at Home
• Reflections on Like Someone in Love
• Filmography
• Bibliography
• Index