The Lighthouse Film Center at the International House of Philadelphia hosted a retrospective film festival featuring the works of Abbas Kiarostami this month, September 2019.
The festival opened with Kiarostami’s 1974 film The Traveler. This film, in black and white, follows a young Qassem Julayi on his mission to attend a soccer match in Tehran. From a small village, Qassem faces many obstacles on his path – how to evade his parents, how to make the money required to buy a bus ticket, how to get a ticket to the game – but after once seeing a professional footballer shoot the ball across the field in his hometown, he is determined to go to the match! This was my favorite film and I was really rooting for Qassem, hoping that he will succeed; although Qassem is devious, dishonest, evading responsibilities, he has a vision and goes to all ends to accomplish that goal.
Kiarostami’s 1987 Where is the Friend’s Home? is the first in a trilogy films about the village Koker, followed by Life and Nothing More .. (1992) and Through the Olive Trees (1994).
Where is the Friend’s Home? also follows a young boy, Ahmed, on his mission; but Ahmed has a virtuous mission – to return his classmate’s notebook which he accidentally mistook as his own. This film shows the great responsibilities carried by the youth of Koker, as they manage to balance their work with their schooling. The title of Where is the Friend’s Home? refers to a poem by Sohrab Seepehri, and while the pace of the film is quite slow, Kiarostami artfully depicts the imagery and themes from this poem, in color.
After the 1990 earthquake in Northern Iran, Life and Nothing More .. follows the director and his son on their mission to check in and find the actors from Where is the Friend’s Home?. This film was very emotional to watch, as it shows the desperation and destruction left in the wake of the earthquake. Aside from their quest to find the actors, the most striking scene of Life and Nothing More .. shows in contrast to the ruin, a young man leaving the house nicely dressed in a suit and polishing his shoes, while he bickers with his wife, living his best life. Another young man sets up an antenna so that the victims of the earthquake do not miss the world cup matches. These characters demonstrate the resiliency in human nature, and are truly role models for overcoming catastrophic circumstances. A number of adult characters in this film do ask themselves “Why?” did the earthquake come and ruin what they had built in their life, their families, was that the will of the almighty to destroy what they had toiled to create? It is natural to wonder.
Through the Olive Trees is a modern masterpiece of film, for the way that it breaks down the barrier between the narrative and the audience, showing the characters as actors playing their roles. This film focuses on the young couple from Life and Nothing More .., exposing the tribulations of the actor playing the well-dressed resilient character. He is struggling in his life, because he cannot get permission to marry the girl he loves. To make this more complicated, his lover is cast as his wife Life and Nothing More ... Though the girl’s family does not accept the engagement, the director in the film encourages the boy to pursue his love.
Over the course of this film festival, the style of Abbas Kiarostami developed from the classical narrative style to a modern style, where the story is told from multiple perspectives. Personally, I prefer classical narrative films, films that capture my attention and transport my mind to a different reality, so I was not expecting to like Kiarostami’s 2008 film Shirin - but it was great! Shirin tells the famous love story of Khosrov and Shirin, not by depicting the story itself but instead by showing famous actresses act as if they are watching a film about the story, and they are so beautiful that I was captivated.
