Leila Lak
As we approach the end of 2016 the loss of some of the world’s most talented musical stars and major political shifts to the right have left the world shaken. The year also lost one of the greatest film directors to have lived, Abbas Kiarostami. For the Iranian Diaspora the loss was felt deeply, as Kiarostami provided them the one source of pride during the bleakest periods for the country they had lost to an Islamic regime and one they barely recognised but through Kiarostami’s lens on ordinary people.
Kiarostami’s influence on cinema cannot be understated, Jean Luc Godard once said, “Cinema begins with D.W Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami.” He made over 40 films in his career and only the last two did he make outside of Iran.
After winning the 1997 Palme D’Or in Cannes for his film a “Taste of Cherry” he was catapulted to international stardom. Critics said he followed in the tradition of the French New Wave, a grand cinematic movement and few directors have ever been compared to. But he first came to fame with his 1990 with “Close-Up”, a film he shot in 40 days about a crook who impersonated his hero, another Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf and convinced people to appear in a film that he pretended to be making. Kiarostami convinced those involved in the crime to re-enact their roles. Speaking in London in 2005 he talked about how this film influenced he future films.
“When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience. Because the film made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn’t directing the actors so much as being directed by them,” he said.
Kiarostami often chose non-actors in his films, he barely scripted and his films often blurred lines between documentary and fiction. But he always stayed clear of politics. He believed the filmmakers role was not that of a journalists but to practice art.
After the 1979 Iranian Revolution most artists and filmmakers fled for Europe and America, Kiarostami stayed in Iran. “To be international you first have to be local,” he said in 2014. “If you take a tree from its origin and plant it in a different location will it be able to grow as much as it would have grown in the original place?” Kiarostami asked. “Is it going to have the same roots, the same leaves, the same ability to have shade for people?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Leila Lak is a journalist, documentary filmmaker and chief journalist of Revista Diaspora.