Hamid Dabashi presents a comprehensive, passionate, and insightful personal account on the evolution of Iranian art cinema in Close Up – Iranian Cinema: Past, Present and Future. By presenting the works of key films and filmmakers within the contextual framework of Iranian history – in particular, from the state-sponsored, forced modernization programs initiated by the […]
The unorthodox presentation of individual criticism by two admirers of Kiarostami’s cinema from different continents in the book Contemporary Film Directors: Abbas Kiarostami is a fascinating approach: the first, a more universal, Western ‘outsider’ perspective from the venerable American film critic Rosenbaum, then subsequently, a more culturally rooted, ‘insider’ perspective from contemporary Iranian filmmaker Mehrnaz […]
Ten is a captivating, humorous, and understated film by Abbas Kiarostami that follows a series of (ten) conversations by a divorced middle-class woman as she engages a series of passengers in a dialogue while navigating the streets of Tehran: her precocious son who feels suffocated by his parents’ competition for his allegiance and affection; her […]
A group of men from the city of Tehran traverse the rural Iranian countryside on a jeep, guided by a set of descriptive, yet unavoidably imprecise directions, seemingly lost. The driver (Behzad Dourani), respectfully called “Engineer” by the villagers, eventually encounters his appointed contact along the side of the road: a gentle, courteous boy named […]
An impassive, middle-aged man drives through the busy urban traffic of the city, and is approached by several day laborers for hire. He has a specific task in mind, but drives away without saying a word. His name is Mr. Badii (Homayon Ershadi), and he is seeking an assistant for his planned suicide. He stops […]
A director, played by an actor (Mohamad Ali Keshavarz), speaks in aside about a real-life devastating earthquake in rural Iran. The director has returned to the village of Koker to work on a new film (an actual Kiarostami film) entitled Life and Nothing More… (And Life Goes On…). The young women have been assembled for […]