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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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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
Culture
Aspect
Denominator
Universal
Acknowledgment
Wasn
Wondering
Started
Searching
Challenges
Cultures
Wonder
Sudden
Working
Reached
Common
Challenge
More quotes by Abbas Kiarostami
My car is my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me. We're in the most comfortable seats because we're not facing each other, but sitting side by side.
Abbas Kiarostami
I'm not sure that my films show the reality of life in Iran we show different aspects of life. Iran is a very extensive and expansive place, and sometimes, even for us who live there, some of the realities are very hard to comprehend.
Abbas Kiarostami
I really enjoy listening to stories. I remember them and keep them in my mind.
Abbas Kiarostami
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
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
All the different nations in the world, despite their differences of appearance and religion and language and way of life, still have one thing in common, and that is what's inside of all of us. If we X-rayed the insides of different human beings, we wouldn't be able to tell from those X-rays what the person's language or background or race is.
Abbas Kiarostami
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
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
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
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
Close-Up has affected later films that I've made.
Abbas Kiarostami
This kind of directing, I think, is very similar to being a football coach. You prepare your players and place them in the right places, but once the game is on, there's nothing much you can do - you can smoke a cigarette or get nervous, but you can't do much.
Abbas Kiarostami
I'm still very grateful to digital cameras in general, but I didn't have this feeling with the RED one.
Abbas Kiarostami
I would be too selfish if I said everyone should see my movies more than once. To say that would mean I'm just marketing my work!
Abbas Kiarostami
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
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
If you are a businessman or a politician in Iran, you can get a visa as quickly as you ask for it.
Abbas Kiarostami
There were years when Hitchcock was like a master to me, but now I think he's so artificial. I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I'm not impressed by any technicality.
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
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
