TEHRAN – Cineastes gathered at Tehran’s Charsu Cineplex on Friday to attend the ceremony held by organizers of the 33rd Tehran International Short Film Festival (TISFF) in honor of Abbas Kiarostami ((1940-2016).

Farabi Cinema Foundation Managing Director Alireza Tabesh, the festival’s secretary Farid Farkhondekish, Karnameh Art and Cultural Institute director Negar Eskandarfar, and a number of Kiarostami’s students attended the event.

Speaking at the ceremony, Eskandarfar pointed to the fact that Karnameh was the only institute where Kiarostami held workshops for a decade.

“Once I told Kiarostami that you have held workshops in every part of the world, why not hold workshops for interested Iranian students and he agreed to the idea,” she said.

She added, “During the first three days of the announcement, 1200 individuals registered. Kiarostami believed that everyone should attend the workshops and did not agree to select the applicants. That is why we held eleven workshops with Kiarostami on different topics.”

“So many people talk about Kiarostami these days but what has remained as his heritage is his students who were lost after Kiarostami had gone on the long journey.

“I told them if you want to hold a ceremony in his honor you’d better go and work. And they made short films with the central themes of ‘Life and No More’, and ‘In Memory of Kiarostami’, and 51 short films were made with love,” she explained.

“And now his students are working and they intend to transfer what they have learned to other interested youth to help keep Kiarostami in mind,” she concluded.

Director of the festival Alireza Karimi Saremi also in his brief words said that Kiarostami loved Iran and the youth of Iran and the world, adding, “He held many workshops in every part of the world and trained many students. He had a significant position in the world.”

The ceremony continued with the screening of 17 one-minute films made by students of Kiarostami in his honor, followed by screening the documentary “76 Minutes and 15 Seconds with Kiarostami”, a montage film made by Kiarostami’s close friend and collaborator Seifollah Samadian. 

Twenty-five foreign guests from different countries, including Germany, Colombia, Belgium, India and Switzerland, are attending this year’s festival, which will run until November 14.

RM/YAW