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I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.
Abbas Kiarostami
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Abbas Kiarostami
Age: 75 †
Born: 1940
Born: January 1
Died: 2016
Died: January 1
Actor
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Film Director
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Teheran
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More quotes by Abbas Kiarostami
I don't ask my students to have studied film or any education in general. What I ask them is to come and sit and tell me a story, and the way they choose it and tell it, for me, the best criteria for whether they are right for making films. There's nothing more important than being able to tell your story orally.
Abbas Kiarostami
In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.
Abbas Kiarostami
This concept that you refer to in Buddhism is something I've been nurtured with through the history of my country for 700, 800 years - Persian poets and philosophers haven't said anything different with regard to experiencing life in the moment, as opposed to the belief of permanence.
Abbas Kiarostami
Directors don't always create, they can also destroy with too many demands.
Abbas Kiarostami
The [Iranian] government grapples with more important issues and we can maybe say that these films don't really exist for them. It's not about whether they like it or don't it's just not very important to them.
Abbas Kiarostami
I really think that I don't mind people sleeping during my films, because I know that some very good films might prepare you for sleeping or falling asleep or snoozing. It's not to be taken badly at all.
Abbas Kiarostami
I had intended to make another film, called Pocket Money, which was to be about children at a school. I was very much intrigued by the story [of Close Up] - it came into my dreams and I was very much influenced by it. So I called my producer and asked that we put aside Pocket Money and start something else, and he agreed.
Abbas Kiarostami
I think life is so difficult to catch, it's so furtive, that a copy, a film, can in no way catch it and represent it.
Abbas Kiarostami
Of the hundreds of points to enter and exit that are offered to me, I have to choose the one that I feel is the least wrong, the least fake. It is fake, it is a moment that I choose to erupt the story, but I make it as smooth as I can. What enables me to do it is the skill of filmmaking.
Abbas Kiarostami
I believe there's only good cinema and bad cinema.
Abbas Kiarostami
The day we run out of petrol is the day Iran will be free.
Abbas Kiarostami
Close-Up has affected later films that I've made.
Abbas Kiarostami
I often say to my students in workshops that if they are trying to find literary inspiration, they should not go and read novels, because novels are more appropriate for series. Where as they should read short stories - that's the right format for you to be able to actually display the narrative in a film.
Abbas Kiarostami
The digital camera has given me total freedom and a different way of filming.
Abbas Kiarostami
I think I'm no different to my friends who are doctors or businessmen or architects - we all started watching films of the golden age together. But whether I'm making films or writing poetry or doing photography, it's very much rooted in my sense of unease. And that's really where everything goes back to.
Abbas Kiarostami
I wasn't searching for a common denominator - I started wondering about the challenge of working in other cultures. What I reached was the sudden acknowledgment of the universal aspect of filmmaking.
Abbas Kiarostami
Anything I've not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.
Abbas Kiarostami
My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.
Abbas Kiarostami
My last experience of film-making was Tickets, a three-episode film in Italy, the third of which is directed by myself. It's not for me to judge whether it's a good film or a bad film, but what I could say is that nobody had a cultural or linguistic issue with what was produced.
Abbas Kiarostami
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.
Abbas Kiarostami
