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I don't generally derive my stories from novels. I try to turn into film things I have felt or experienced.

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
Things
Generally
Novel
Turn
Turns
Felt
Film
Derive
Stories
Novels
Trying
Experienced

More quotes by 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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Whether you consider me a master filmmaker or not, I do it with my intuition and my vision, my experience as a storyteller.
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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.
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I do believe in [Robert] Bresson's method of creation through omission, not through addition.
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My way of expression is full of complications and mystery because that's my perception of life.
Abbas Kiarostami
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The digital camera has given me total freedom and a different way of filming.
Abbas Kiarostami
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It's very true that non-actors feel more comfortable in front of a digital camera, without the lights and the large crowd around them, and we arrive at much more intimate moments with them.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I can only display what I've been nurtured with, which is this worldview which has become my view. If I displayed anything different from it in my work, I wouldn't deserve this heritage.
Abbas Kiarostami
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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.
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I am still very surprised that I managed to make that film [Close Up]. When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I didn't just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death.
Abbas Kiarostami
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This was pointed out to me by somebody who referred to the paintings of Rembrandt and his use of light: some elements are highlighted while others are obscured or even pushed back into the dark. And it's something that we do - we bring out elements that we want to emphasise.
Abbas Kiarostami
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There are certainties in existence, but love is something much harder to define than light and dark, life and death. I think saying you are like someone in love sounds right.
Abbas Kiarostami
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If you are a businessman or a politician in Iran, you can get a visa as quickly as you ask for it.
Abbas Kiarostami
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It's true that the best way of knowing yourself is to put yourself into different situations.
Abbas Kiarostami
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The starting point and the ending point are nothing but two arbitrary choices. You make them as in soccer games, where they chose that it's 90 minutes, not less and not more. But the choices are the responsibility of the filmmaker. You have to choose to join the story at an arbitrary point, and you leave it at an arbitrary point.
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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As soon as people enter a theater they must become moron consumers who must be fed information.
Abbas Kiarostami
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In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I really enjoy listening to stories. I remember them and keep them in my mind.
Abbas Kiarostami