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Everybody knows that I am not usually patient enough to actually sit down and watch one of my own films from the beginning to the end - I never do.

Abbas Kiarostami

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Abbas Kiarostami
Age: 75 †
Born: 1940
Born: January 1
Died: 2016
Died: January 1
Actor
Cinematographer
Contributing Editor
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Graphic Designer
Illustrator
Painter
Photographer
Teheran
Film
Patient
Ends
Films
Enough
Beginning
Never
Usually
Watches
Watch
Everybody
Actually

More quotes by Abbas Kiarostami

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I did not have a script [of Close Up]. I made notes in the evenings and we filmed during the day over 40 days.I didn't sleep a wink for those 40 nights. I have a picture from the end of the shoot, and in it I have lost all my hair.
Abbas Kiarostami
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Having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I think that if you're a digital thinker, you can use a digital camera.
Abbas Kiarostami
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In this type of cinema, whether working with actors or non-actors, as much as you do direct them, if you allow yourself to be directed by them, then the end result will be much more pleasing. The real and individual strengths of the actors is allowed to be expressed and is something that does affect the audience very deeply.
Abbas Kiarostami
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You've noticed that same joke told by two different people, once works, and the other time doesn't, simply because how the person edits it. The silences, the pauses, what they neglect, what they emphasize - all of this matters.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I really haven't seen The Report in a long time. I don't have a copy, but I'll have to see it again. I think it would be good to put both these men next to each other.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I'm still very grateful to digital cameras in general, but I didn't have this feeling with the RED one.
Abbas Kiarostami
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The one-word cinema wasn't possible for me anymore. I'd hit a wall, a dead end. Therefore I thought I'd turn back.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I think it was [Jean-Luc] Godard who said that life is nothing but a bad copy of film, but then our ambition must be to make better films and better shapes of forms that are given in life.
Abbas Kiarostami
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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
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I think violence can never be justified. At the same time, nobody’s culture or beliefs should be insulted, that’s not something I can accept either. But I cannot justify or accept any violence at all.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I think being someone in love is so hard to define, so temporary, because retrospectively we often deny the state in which we were in love.
Abbas Kiarostami
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As long as I take the responsibility of the choice, I have to make the choice that is as right as possible.
Abbas Kiarostami
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As soon as people enter a theater they must become moron consumers who must be fed information.
Abbas Kiarostami
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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
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As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that's less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.
Abbas Kiarostami
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Good cinema is what we can believe and bad cinema is what we can't believe. What you see and believe in is very much what I'm interested in.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I don't like reverse-angle shots - I find them very fake and very untruthful to the viewer.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic so I have my doubts.
Abbas Kiarostami
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If I do continue to have the opportunity to work in Iran, that's very much what I'd prefer to do.
Abbas Kiarostami