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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

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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
Good
Films
Think
Sleep
Thinking
Taken
People
Fall
Asleep
Film
Sleeping
Might
Badly
Mind
Prepare
Really
Falling

More quotes by Abbas Kiarostami

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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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When I talk to some of the younger filmmakers, they are so worried about their films that, eventually, this state of being worried reflects itself in and helps the final work. Whereas, with projects that are meticulously planned, you look at the end result and it is full of emptiness.
Abbas Kiarostami
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Using non-actors has its own rules and really requires that you allow them to do their own thing.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks.
Abbas Kiarostami
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The experience of life teaches us that being like someone in love is more real, because everything is uncertain.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I only make notes, I don't write dialogues in full. And the notes are very much based on my knowledge of person.
Abbas Kiarostami
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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
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I believe there's only good cinema and bad cinema.
Abbas Kiarostami
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While shooting Ten I was sitting in the backseat, but I didn't interfere. Sometimes, I was following in another car, so I was not even present on the set, because I thought they would work better in my absence.
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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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
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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 never reflect or convey that which I have not experienced myself.
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 think that in life, being is nothing but an illusion. If we acknowledge that and accept the fact that we are in between states, that we are moving, and this movement is the nature of our lives, and we stop having aspirations for being in a definite state, we know life better and are able to enjoy it better.
Abbas Kiarostami
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In my mind, there isn't as much of a distinction between documentary and fiction as there is between a good movie and a bad one.
Abbas Kiarostami
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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
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It is a very important film, Life And Nothing More, in that what was filmed was inspired by a journey I had made just three days after an earthquake. And I speak not only of the film itself but also of the experience of being in that place, where only three days before 50,000 people had died.
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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I think Woody Allen is Woody Allen, and no matter where he goes he still makes his Woody Allen films.
Abbas Kiarostami