Asian Film Archive to hold retrospective of filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami
TEHRAN –(Iranart)- The Asian Film Archive, a non-governmental center in Singapore that preserves the film heritage of Asian cinema, plans to hold a retrospective of the world-renowned Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.
Thirty-four feature and short films will be showcased during the retrospective, which will be organized from July 10 to August 28 at Oldham Theatre, National Archives of Singapore Building, the organizers have announced.
In a statement for the exhibition, the Asian Film Archive wrote, “The most acclaimed and influential of Iran’s major filmmakers, Abbas Kiarostami has graced the world with his humanity and imagination throughout a nearly five-decade career.
“The Asian Film Archive is honored to be the first in Asia to present a comprehensive retrospective of the Iranian master with twenty-seven brand new restorations of his most illustrious features and rarely-screened shorts and documentaries.
“This film program is an invitation into a contemplative world between fiction and reality, marked by an unforced intimacy and a poetic voice of a deeply influential artist.
“Often applying a deft philosophical touch to simple issues and excavating deeper truths about life with bold experiments, Kiarostami’s cinema invokes introspection and greater possibilities for his audience, allowing each of us to relate his films to our own worlds with new understandings.”
The 2010 drama “Certified Copy” that won Juliette Binoche the award for best actress at the Cannes Film Festival is among the films.
It is about an English author who visits Italy to promote his latest book and give a lecture on the relationship between originals and copies in the world of art. He meets a French art gallery owner and they decide to spend a couple of hours walking through the alleyways of a small village in the southern parts of Tuscany.
His final film “24 Frames” will also be reviewed in the program.
In this film, Kiarostami gave himself a challenge to create a dialogue between his work as a filmmaker and his work as a photographer, bridging the two art forms to which he had dedicated his life.
“The Wind Will Carry Us”, “Close-up”, “Like Someone in Love” and “Taste of Cherry” are also among the movies selected to be screened.
source: Tehran Times