Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami Abbas Kiarostami (عباس کیارستمی in Persian) (born June 22, 1940 in Tehran). is one of the most influential and controversial post-revolutionary Iranian filmmaker and one of the most highly celebrated directors in the international film community of the last decade. (1) During the period of the ‘80s and the ‘90s, at a time when Iranians had such a negative image in the West, his cinema introduced a humane and artistic face. Kiarostami has studied at the Tehran University's Faculty of Fine Arts. In 1970, he founded the film department of the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, which became an important center for Iranian contemporary film making. He founded the film department of the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (known as Kanun) where a number of the highest quality Iranian films were produced. He ran the department for five years and at the same time directed his first film, Bread and Alley, in 1970. Making educational films for children at Kanun, a non-commercial organization, helped him form his basic approach to cinema. Although Kiarostami made several award-winning films early in his career, it was after the revolution that he earned a highly esteemed reputation on the stage of world cinema. 20 years after his ground-breaking debut feature, Report (1977), he was awarded the prestigious Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes International Film Festival for his film Taste of Cherry in 1997. His masterpiece Close-Up (1990) and, later, the poetic Life and Nothing More…(1992) led to Kiarostami’s discovery in the West, and only then it was mainly by the French. He won the Un Certain Regard award for the latter at Cannes. Kiarostami belongs to a generation of filmmakers who created the so called "New Wave", a movement in Iranian cinema that started in the ‘60s, before the revolution of 1979 and flourished in the ‘70s. (2) Directors like Farrokhzad, Saless, Bayzai, and Kimiavi were the pioneers of this movement. They made innovative art films which had highly political and philosophical tones and poetic language. Some, like Saless (who is compared to Bresson), introduced a realist (minimal plot, non-dramatic) style, while others, like Kimiavi (known as the Iranian Godard, mixing fantasy and reality), employed a metaphoric form. While having been involved and active within Iran since long before the Iranian Revolution he became internationally known in the 1980s and 1990s due to his repeated participation at international film festivals. He has won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival for his movie Taste of Cherry in 1997. His films are characterised by involvement of lay actors and simple but highly symbolic story telling. He is also a poet and first published collection of his poems in 1999. Kiarostami, Abbas Kiarostami, Abbas Kiarostami, Abbas eo:Abbas KIAROSTAMI fr:Abbas Kiarostami ja:%E3%82%A2%E3%83%83%E3%83%90%E3%82%B9%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AD%E3%82%A2%E3%83%AD%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BF%E3%83%9F

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