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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 . PERSONAL LIFE College of Fine Arts ]] 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 was one of the few directors who 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. on the poster of "Exhibition of the Persian Maestro's Art work" held in Rome .]] 1980s In the early 1980s, Kiarostami directed several Short Film s including '' Dental Hygiene '' (1980), '' Orderly Or Disorderly '' (1981), and '' The Chorus '' (1982). In 1983, he directed '' Fellow Citizen '', but it was not until 1987 that Abbas began to gain recognition outside of Iran with the release of '' Where Is The Friend's Home? ''. 1990s '', a film in which documentary and fiction constantly change places to challenge the conventions of cinema.]] '' (1994), was the third and final film in the ''Koker trilogy''.]] In 1995, Miramax Films released '' Through The Olive Trees '' in the US theatrically. Kiarostami next wrote the screenplays for ''The Journey'' and '' The White Balloon '' (1995), for his former assistant Jafar Panahi . Between 1995 and 1996, he was involved in the production of '' Lumière And Company '', a collaboration with 40 other film directors. 2000s '', a UN commissioned documentary about programmes assisting orphans in Uganda .]] In 2001, Kiarostami and his assistant, Seifollah Samadian, traveled to , '' Time Out '' editor and National Film Theatre chief programmer Geoff Andrew stated about Kiarostami's film: "Like his previous four features, this film is not about death but life-and-death: how they're linked, and what attitude we might adopt with regard to their symbiotic inevitability."Geoff Andrew, ''Ten'', (London: BFI Publishing, 2005) p. 32. In 2003, Kiarostami directed '' Five '', a poetic feature with no dialog or characterization. It consists of five long shots of nature which are single-take sequences, shot with a hand-held DV camera, along the shores of the Caspian Sea . Although the film lacks a clear storyline, Geoff Andrew argues that the film is "more than just pretty pictures": "Assembled in order, they comprise a kind of abstract or emotional narrative arc, which moves evocatively from separation and solitude to community, from motion to rest, near-silence to sound and song, light to darkness and back to light again, ending on a note of rebirth and regeneration."Geoff Andrew, ''Ten'', (London: BFI Publishing, 2005) pp 73–4. He further notes the degree of artifice concealed behind the apparent simplicity of the imagery. In 2004, Kiarostami produced '' 10 On Ten '', a journal documentary that shares ten lessons on movie-making while driving through the locations of his past films. The movie is shot on digital video with a stationary camera mounted inside the car, in a manner reminiscent of ''Taste of Cherry'' and ''Ten''. In 2005 and 2006, he directed '' The Roads Of Kiarostami '', a 32-minute documentary that reflects on the power of landscape, combining austere black-and-white photographs with poetic observations, engaging music with political subject matter. Kiarostami's most recent film was '' Tickets '', directed in collaboration with Ken Loach and Ermanno Olmi . It covers the interactions between people on Public Transport and in the street of everyday life. CINEMATIC STYLE See Also: Cinematic style of Abbas Kiarostami Individualism winning film, '' Taste Of Cherry ''.]] Though Kiarostami has been compared to Satyajit Ray , Vittorio De Sica , Eric Rohmer , and Jacques Tati , his films exhibit a singular style, often employing techniques of his own invention. Unlike other directors, Kiarostami has showed no interest in staging extravagant Combat scenes or complicated chase scenes in large-scale productions, but instead attempted to mold the medium of film to his own specifications. Kiarostami appeared to have settled on his style with the '' Koker Trilogy '' which included a myriad of references to his own film material, connecting common themes and subject matter between each of the films. Stephen Bransford has contended that Kiarostami's films do not contain references to the work of other directors, but are fashioned in such a manner that they are self-referenced. Bransford believes his films are often fashioned into an ongoing dialectic: one film reflecting on and partially demystifying an earlier film. camera used to film the daily routines of a woman in '' Ten '' without the personal presence of the director]] '', looking back on his film-making techniques]] Fiction and non-fiction all looks like reporting, but everything underscores (''indique à l'évidence'') that it is the fiction of a documentary (in fact, Kiarostami shot the film several months after the earthquake), and that it is rather a document about "fiction": not in the sense of imagining the unreal, but in the very specific and precise sense of the technique, of the ''art'' of constructing images. For the image by means of which, each time, each opens a world and precedes himself in it (''s'y précède'') is not pregiven (''donnée toute faite'') (as are those of dreams, phantasms or bad films): it is to be invented, cut and edited. Thus it is ''evidence'', insofar as, if one day I happen to ''look'' at my street on which I walk up and down ten times a day, I construct for an instant a new ''evidence'' of my street.Jean-Luc Nancy, "On Evidence: ''Life and Nothing More'', by Abbas Kiarostami," ''Discourse'' 21.1 (1999), p.82. Also, cf., [http://www.egs.edu/faculty/nancy/nancy-is-cinema-renewing-itself.html . For Jean-Luc Nancy, this notion of cinema as "evidence," rather than as documentary or imagination, is tied to the way Kiarostami deals with life-and-death (cf. the remark by Geoff Andrew on ''ABC Africa'', cited above, to the effect that Kiarostami's films are not about death but about life-and-death): Existence resists the indifference of life-and-death, it lives beyond mechanical "life," it is always its own mourning, and its own joy. It becomes figure, image. It does not become alienated in images, but it is presented there: the images are the evidence of its existence, the objectivity of its assertion. This thought—which, for me, is the very thought of this film and Nothing More...'' —is a difficult thought, perhaps the most difficult. It's a slow thought, always under way, fraying a path so that the path itself becomes thought. It is that which frays images so that images become this thought, so that they become the evidence of this thought—and not in order to "represent" it.Jean-Luc Nancy, "On Evidence: ''Life and Nothing More'', by Abbas Kiarostami," ''Discourse'' 21.1 (1999), p.85–6. Themes of life and death ]] Themes of life and death and the concepts of Change and Continuity play a major role in Kiarostami's works. In the Koker Trilogy these themes play a central role. As illustrated in the aftermath of the 1990 Tehran earthquake disaster, they represent an ongoing opposition between life force and death and the power of human resilience to overcome and defy destruction. However, unlike the Koker films, which convey an instinctual thirst for survival, ''Taste of Cherry'' also explores the fragility of life and rhetorically focuses also on the preciousness of life . ''.]] Visual and audio techniques '' (1991–1992)]] Kiarostami's style is notable for the use of panoramic long shots, such as in the closing sequences of '' Life And Nothing More '' and'' Through The Olive Trees '', where the audience is intentionally distanced physically from the characters in order to stimulate reflection on their fate. '' Taste Of Cherry '' is punctuated throughout by shots of this kind, including distant overhead shots of the suicidal Badii's car moving across the hills, usually while he is conversing with a passenger. However, the visual distanciation techniques stand in juxtaposition to the sound of the dialog, which always remains in the foreground. Like the coexistence of private and public space, or the frequent framing of landscapes through car windows, this fusion of distance with proximity can be seen as a way of generating suspense in the most mundane of moments. '' is later juxtaposed by a panoramic overhead view as his car moves across the hills]] This relationship between distance and intimacy, between imagery and sound, is also present in the opening sequence to '' The Wind Will Carry Us ''. Michael J. Anderson has argued that such a Thematic application of this central concept of presence without presence, through using such Technique s, and by often referring to characters which the viewer does not see and sometimes not hear directly affects the nature and concept of space in the Geographical framework in which the world is portrayed. Kiarostami's use of sound and Imagery conveys a world beyond what is directly visible and/or audible, which Anderson's believes emphasizes the interconnectedness and shrinking of time and space in the modern world of Telecommunications . Other commentators such as Film Critic Ben Zipper believe that Kiarostami’s work as a landscape artist is evident in his compositional distant shots of the dry hills throughout a number of his films directly impacting on his construction on the rural landscapes within his films. Poetry and imagery Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak , of the University Of Maryland , argues that one aspect of Kiarostami's cinematic style is that he is able to capture the essence of Persian Poetry and create poetic imagery within the landscape of his films. In several of Kiarostami's pictures such as '' Where's The Friend's Home '' and '' The Wind Will Carry Us '', classical Persian poetry is directly quoted in the film, highlighting the artistic link and intimate connection between them. This in turn reflects on the connection between the past and present, between continuity and change.Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad. "From Kinetic Poetics to a Poetic Cinema: Abbas Kiarostami and the Esthetics of Persian Poetry." University of Maryland (2005) , Persian poet and philosopher in Nishapur ]] The characters recite poems mainly from classical Persian poet Omar Khayyám or modern Persian poets such as Sohrab Sepehri and Forough Farrokhzad . One scene in ''The Wind Will Carry Us'' has a long shot of a wheat field with rippling golden crops through which the doctor, accompanied by the filmmaker, is riding his scooter in a twisting road. In response to the comment that the other world is a better place than this one, the doctor recites this poem of Khayyam:
However, the aesthetic involved with the poetry goes much farther back in time and is used much more subtly than these examples suggest. Beyond issues of adaptation of text to film, Kiarostami often begins with an insistent will to give visual embodiment to certain specific image-making techniques in Persian poetry, both classical and modern. This prominently results in enunciating a larger Philosophical position, namely the ontological oneness of poetry and film. Spirituality Kiarostami's films often reflect upon immaterial concepts as the soul and afterlife. At times, however, the very concept of the spiritual seems to be contradicted by the medium itself, given that it has no inherent means to confer the metaphysical. Some film theorists have argued that ''The Wind Will Carry Us'' provides a template by which a filmmaker can communicate Metaphysical reality. The limits of the frame, the material representation of a space in dialog with another that is not represented, physically become metaphors for the relationship between this world and those which may exist apart from it. By limiting the space of the Mise En Scène , Kiarostami expands the space of the art. Differing viewpoints have arisen about this issue. While the vast majority of English-language writers, such as David Sterritt and Spanish film professor Alberto Elena, interpret Kiarostami's films as spiritual films, other critics including David Walsh and Hamish Ford have diminished its influence in his films. POETRY AND PHOTOGRAPHY '' in 2004]] Kiarostami is a noted . Kiarostami's poetry is reminiscent of the later nature poems of the Persian painter-poet, Sohrab Sepehri . On the other hand, the succinct allusion to Philosophical truths without the need for deliberation, the non-judgmental tone of the poetic voice, and the structure of the poem—absence of personal pronouns, adverbs or over reliance on adjectives—as well as the lines containing a ''kigo'' (a season word) gives much of this poetry a Haiku esque characteristic. RECEPTION AND CRITICISM where he opened an exhibition titled "The Roads of Abbas Kiarostami".]] Nevertheless, critics such as Jonathan Rosenbaum have argued that "there's no getting around the fact that the movies of Abbas Kiarostami divide audiences—in this country, in his native Iran, and everywhere else they're shown." Rosenbaum argues that disagreements and controversy over Kiarostami's pictures have arisen from his style of filmmaking because what in Hollywood would count as essential narrative information is frequently missing from Kiarostami's films. Camera placement, likewise, often defies standard audience expectations. In the closing sequences of ''Life and Nothing More'' and ''Through the Olive Trees'', the audience is forced to imagine missing scenes. In ''Homework'' and ''Close-Up'', parts of the sound track have been masked, or drop in and out. It has also been argued that the subtlety of Kiarostami's form of cinematic expression is resistant to critical analysis. Daniel Ross , Review of Geoff Andrew, ''Ten''. While Kiarostami has won significant acclaim in Europe for several of his films, the Iranian Government has refused to permit the showing of his films in his native Iran . Kiarostami has responded, "The government has decided not to show any of my films for the past 10 years... I think they don't understand my films and so prevent them being shown just in case there is a message they don't want to get out". HONORS AND AWARDS in Marrakech International Film Festival.]]
FILM FESTIVAL WORK and in 2005 president of the Camera d'or Jury]] Kiarostami was a member of the jury at numerous festivals, most notably the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, 2002 and 2005. He was also the president of the Camera d'or Jury in Cannes Film Festival 2005.
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