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Maybe more than a teller, I am a story listener. I really enjoy listening to stories. I remember them and keep them in my mind. All of my films are a collection of small stories that have been told to me.

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
Film
Films
Stories
Listening
Remember
Told
Mind
Small
Really
Maybe
Story
Teller
Enjoy
Listener
Keep
Collection

More quotes by 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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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 only thing that I can do is hold a mirror in front of men and women, in front of the viewer in the theater, to reflect. There is nothing but reflection that I could intend to offer the viewer of the film.
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 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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A movie is about human beings, about humanity.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.
Abbas Kiarostami
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Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.
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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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 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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I think Woody Allen is Woody Allen, and no matter where he goes he still makes his Woody Allen films.
Abbas Kiarostami
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I saw this French woman, this English man in Italy. It was a film [Certified Copy] I knew well, but I had already seen it, and I was familiar with it, and I had no feeling of anxiety or responsibility toward it.
Abbas Kiarostami
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The one-word cinema wasn't possible for me anymore. I'd hit a wall, a dead end. Therefore I thought I'd turn back.
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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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
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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.
Abbas Kiarostami
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It seems that film-makers are being divided between those working in digital and those who are not. I think it's not something predetermined - it all depends on what project we have in mind, and on that basis we choose the medium.
Abbas Kiarostami
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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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Anything I've not experienced I do not look to for a subject. I have to feel it.
Abbas Kiarostami