After the sweltering summer month of May, we move to the monsoon month of June, where the freshness and fragrance of air and rain fill the atmosphere. Let the same freshness continue in our Wednesday screenings at Lamakaan as we remember one of the most iconic names in the world of cinema, Abbas Kiarostami.
Abbas Kiarostami (Persian: عباس کیارستمی (22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy (1987–1994), Close-Up (1990), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and Taste of Cherry (1997), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In later works, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively. His films Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987), Close-Up and The Wind Will Carry Us were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 critics' poll by BBC Culture. Close-Up was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the famous decennial Sight & Sound poll conducted in 2012.
Kiarostami had worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, art director, and producer and had designed credit titles and publicity material. He was also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer. He was part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave. This Persian cinema movement started in the late 1960s and emphasized poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues.
Kiarostami had a reputation for using child protagonists, documentary-style narrative films,[9] for stories in rural villages, and conversations that unfold inside cars, using stationary mounted cameras. He is also known for his use of Persian poetry in the dialogue, titles, and themes of his films. Kiarostami's films contain a notable degree of ambiguity, an unusual mixture of simplicity and complexity, and often a mix of fictional and documentary elements. The concepts of change and continuity and the themes of life and death play a major role in Kiarostami's works.
Film Title: WHERE IS THE FRIEND'S HOUSE? | 1987 | 83 Mins | Iran | Persian Language with English Subtitles
About the film: Where Is the Friend's House?(Persian: خانه دوست کجاست, Khane-ye dust kojast) is a 1987 Iranian drama film written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami. The plot depicts a conscientious schoolboy's attempt to return his friend's school notebook to his home in a neighboring village to prevent the friend from being expelled if he fails to hand it in the next day. The film, whose title derives from a poem by Sohrab Sepehri, is the first installment in Kiarostami's Koker trilogy, followed by And Life Goes On and Through the Olive Trees, all of which take place in Koker, Iran.
Screening followed by Discussion. All are Welcome. Entry is Free & Open to all!