Quote

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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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
Games
Soccer
Story
Filmmaker
Point
Starting
Less
Choose
Two
Minutes
Arbitrary
Stories
Leave
Chose
Nothing
Responsibility
Ending
Make
Choices
Join

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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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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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
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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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A digital camera does have many advantages and I was a believer that digital video would be a big influence on film-making.
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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In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.
Abbas Kiarostami
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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
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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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Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can't limit it to one particular culture.
Abbas Kiarostami
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In real life, when someone's partner calls them, they can tell from the first word their partner says what their mood is.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I've often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it's inside a frame.
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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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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If we're not going to take full advantage of digital, then 35mm is a better medium. Especially for shooting dramas - I have no problem with 35mm.
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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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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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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I never intended to write poems, nor to be a photographer, nor to be a film-maker. I just took many, many pictures and I would put them in an album, and then some years later I decided to show them and suddenly I was called a photographer. Same thing with my poetry. They're notes that I'd written in a book and it may be considered poetry.
Abbas Kiarostami
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It's not so much a question of whether we've shot it through 35mm or digital video what is important is whether the audience accepts it as real.
Abbas Kiarostami