Where Is Friend Kiarostami?: Pompidou Center, MK2 Films to review oeuvre of Kiarostami
TEHRAN –(Iranart0- The Pompidou Center in Paris and the French company MK2 Films have teamed up to exhibit an oeuvre of Abbas Kiarostami, the world-renowned Iranian artist who was an old hand in numerous art media, in a program named “Where Is Friend Kiarostami?”
The center has announced that the entire works of Kiarostami, from films to photos and poems, will be showcased in the major exhibition that will be organized at the center from May 5 to July 5.
The center will also review 46 films by Kiarostami in a retrospective from April 15 to July 4. Numerous guests are scheduled to attend the showcase.
The Kiarostami Foundation has also contributed to the exhibits, which will feature collections of videos and documents, series of his unpublished photographs, sequences of his most beautiful films and presentations of his works on classical and contemporary poetry.
Masumeh Lahidji, Iranian interpreter and one of Kiarostami’s close collaborators, is supervising the retrospective.
In an interview with the Pompidou Center, Lahidji expressed her thanks to the worldwide recognition of Kiarostami’s 1987 drama, “Where Is the Friend’s Home?”
She added that Kiarostami opened a window to the rich and profound cinematography in Iran.
She noted that the global recognition reached its peak with the Cannes Palme d’Or for his “Taste of Cherry” in 1997.
“He established himself as a source of inspiration for many young filmmakers, who were notably able to work alongside him during the workshops that he held across the world until his last breath,” she stated.
About his relationship with Persian poetry, Lahiji said, “Like all Iranians, Kiarostami was immersed in classical Persian poetry and his language, his views are imbued with it.
“His cinema, his photography and all of his productions, while having an obvious universal scope, are the fruit of this ancestral tradition.”
She said that the exhibition aims precisely to make the link between all the aspects of his protean work.
In a report published earlier in April 2020, Variety announced that Netflix has penned a deal with MK2 Films to screen a number of restored versions of Kiarostami’s films.
The collection included 33 features, documentaries and shorts by Kiarostami including “Taste of Cherry”, “The Wind Will Carry Us” and “Where Is the Friend’s Home?”.
MK2 Films acquired all rights to the first 20 movies made by Kiarostami in a deal with Iran’s Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA) in 2017.
As part of the deal, MK2 has restored the films in 4K. The titles include “The Traveler” and “Where Is the Friend’s Home?”.
In April 2020, MK2 also released Kiarostami’s Koker Trilogy, which is composed of “Where Is the Friend’s Home?”, “And Life Goes On” and “Through the Olive Trees”. The movies all were shot on location in the rural northern Iranian town of Koker.
source: Tehran Times