Arquivo

Abbas Kiarostami returned to Teheran reflecting deeply on his creative process. The result is in this film, where he shares his experiences in a career of over 30 years and 36 films, dividing same into ten chapters: introduction, camera, subject, script, locations, music, the actor, equipment, the film director, the last lesson. For the director, cinema is simple: all he needs is a camera, three lenses and a pair of tripods. Every movement of the camera - or absence of movement - must have a good reason. The DV camera that he discovered when he had to hastily refilm the final scenes of Taste of Cherry, ruined in the laboratory, is today one of his passions. Kiarostami sees in this small portable camera, the ideal means towards abolishing clichés and doing away with aesthetic pretension. From his viewpoint, because of its low cost, digital technology makes filmmakers as independent as writers, painters, and sculptors, in addition to providing them with one more resource in countries where there is still censorship, such as his own. Finally, Kiarostami establishes a connection between his cinema and Italian neorealism, calling on the teachings of Cesare Zavattini who believed that the subject for a film is always to be found around us, in the streets.