TEHRAN – The IMS Cinema in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is presenting a retrospective of the work of the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, one of the great names in world cinema.

From his early short films made at Kanoon (Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Adolescents) to the feature films that made him internationally famous, the exhibition covers five decades of activity and restless cinematic thought, ILNA reported.

Until September 27, his short, medium, and feature films will be screened in restored 2K copies. A rare opportunity to discover or revisit, in almost its entirety, the poetics and practice of an artist who expanded the possibilities of the moving image from Iran to the world. 

The program includes films such as “The Bread and the Alley” (1970), the director's first short film, up to his last feature film, “24 Frames,” released posthumously in 2017, passing through works such as the celebrated Koker trilogy, which includes “Where Is My Friend's House?,” “Life and Nothing More,” and “Through the Olive Trees”; “Close-Up,” one of the films responsible for bringing his work to the world's attention; and “Taste of Cherry,” winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1997. 

Abbas Kiarostami (1940 – 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over 40 films, including shorts and documentaries.

In later works, “Certified Copy” (2010) and “Like Someone in Love” (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively. 

His films “Where Is the Friend's House?” (1987), “Close-Up,” and “The Wind Will Carry Us” were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 critics' poll by BBC Culture. “Close-Up” was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the famous decennial Sight & Sound poll conducted in 2012. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of Iran, and of all time.

Kiarostami had worked extensively as a screenwriter, film editor, art director, and producer and had designed credit titles and publicity material. He was also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator, and graphic designer. He was part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and emphasized the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with political and philosophical issues.

Kiarostami had a reputation for using child protagonists, for documentary-style narrative films, for stories that take place in rural villages, and for conversations that unfold inside cars, using stationary mounted cameras. He is also known for his use of Persian poetry in the dialogue, titles, and themes of his films. Kiarostami's films contain a notable degree of ambiguity, an unusual mixture of simplicity and complexity, and often a mix of fictional and documentary elements. The concepts of change and continuity, in addition to the themes of life and death, play a major role in Kiarostami's works.

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