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

More quotes by 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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I never really learned photography.
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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.
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I thought that choosing a non-professional was a condition for me, because it would allow Juliette to have a less-professional way of acting. It would challenge her performance as a professional actress.
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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 think that if you're a digital thinker, you can use a digital camera.
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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.
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I really enjoy listening to stories. I remember them and keep them in my mind.
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 spend a lot of time doing carpentry. Sometimes there is nothing that gives me the contentment that sawing a piece of wood does.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I often say to my students in workshops that if they are trying to find literary inspiration, they should not go and read novels, because novels are more appropriate for series. Where as they should read short stories - that's the right format for you to be able to actually display the narrative in a film.
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 don't like reverse-angle shots - I find them very fake and very untruthful to the viewer.
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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Of the hundreds of points to enter and exit that are offered to me, I have to choose the one that I feel is the least wrong, the least fake. It is fake, it is a moment that I choose to erupt the story, but I make it as smooth as I can. What enables me to do it is the skill of filmmaking.
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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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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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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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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Despite the great advantages of digital video and the great ease of using the medium, still those who use it have first to understand the sensitivities of how to best use the medium.
Abbas Kiarostami