TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX ANNOUNCES ABBAS KIAROSTAMI RETROSPECTIVE SPONSORED BY ISTIC ILLIC!
How did I become the cinephile I am today? Why do I put my heart, soul, and money into the fantastically difficult business of independent film? Like much of who I am, it goes back to the few formative years during which I lived in New York City. I can narrow it down further — to my last 10 months in the City, months that bridged the turn of the century. I signed an illegal sublet for a rent-controlled apartment at Spring and 6th, just a few blocks’ walk from three different, magnificent movie theaters: Film Forum, the Angelika Film Center, and The Screening Room.
Any New York movie fan knows Film Forum and the Angelika. Both have launched dozens of new visionary filmmakers into popularity. Both have re-launched classics that you may not have even known had been lost before being resurrected by these venues. The Screening Room, though, lived for fewer than ten years in a neighborhood that was little noted at the time. It is a theater that has been lost to history, lost even to the Internet, but as I narrow the fruition of my passion down further, I see myself at the Screening Room on Varick Street in one week of the winter of 2000.
How mind opening was it to live in New York City at that time? More so than today or at any other time? I don’t know. But the city was thriving. Crime had collapsed, garbage and its stink had been taken off the sidewalks, and people who weren’t millionaires could still find a place in Manhattan. The mood on the streets felt almost universally optimistic.
The winter of 2000 was toward the end of my too-brief time there. I knew that I would likely be moving away soon, and perhaps that was why my mind was so conscious of the day-to-day experience of being in New York. One day on a subway platform, I saw a teenager dressed in bright colors. His head was capped by a rainbow beanie with a spinner. How ruthlessly this kid would have been teased in Florida! In almost any place! But New York has room for those who reject “lead, follow, or get out of the way.” Other than myself, lost in reverie, not a single person on that crowded platform gave that kid a second glance. That moment encapsulated for me the internal change that I felt in New York. I realized that the social structures of most places were utterly lame. Here, “follow your bliss” was not a platitude; it was a way of life implicit to the culture.
I was taking in the outside world at the pace of a toddler. I walked the streets endlessly, journeys scored by John Coltrane and the Fugees. I browsed record stores, bookstores, zine shops, galleries of art and of obscura. My closest friend and I played chess poorly in rooms near Washington Square Park surrounded by smoking vagrants and Russians — savants all of them. I talked to immigrants from around the world and natives from the five boroughs. Concerts; museums; plays; street performers; three-card monte. People watching. I read the New York Times daily and the adventurous free weeklies weekly. Ideas abounded.
I became movie-mad. The final years of the century were astounding ones for American and foreign film; repertory screenings exposed me to American and foreign classics on the big screen — as they were meant to be seen. Nearly as impactful, an embarrassment of riches in film criticism that has enriched my experience of film ever since.
It was in December 1999 that the Village Voice released its first film poll, consolidating the insights of over a hundred critics, curators, historians, archivists and programmers — a who’s who of people who dedicate themselves to the appreciation of film as an art form. The poll ranked the top films of the year, of the decade, and of the century coming to an end. In those lists, I kept seeing a name that I had never heard before: Abbas Kiarostami.
He was from Iran. Wait — Iran? I am embarrassed to admit that even in the awakening that came from living in Manhattan, Iran still represented little more to me than images of angry men burning American flags and self-flagellating. My impressions of the country had been established by the burst of dumb patriotism that followed the 1979 Hostage Crisis, which was one of the first news stories to break into my childhood consciousness. I had not given Iran or the unfathomably rich history of Persia much if any thought since then.
Then, just weeks after reading that issue of the Voice, I saw an advertisement. The Screening Room would be showing a small Abbas Kiarostami retrospective. I loved movies before I moved to New York. I was curious about the world before I moved to New York. My curiosity about people, film, and the world grew throughout those years. But that one week, when Abbas Kiarostami blew my mind, capstoned those years and opened my mind to new paths that I have explored ever since.
I think a good film is one that has a lasting power, and you start to reconstruct it right after you leave the theater. There are a lot of films that seem to be boring, but they are decent films. On the other hand, there are films that nail you to your seat and overwhelm you to the point that you forget everything. I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. I think those films are kind enough to allow you a nice nap and not leave you disturbed when you leave the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater but at the same films of made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks. These are the kind of films that I like.
Abbas Kiarastomi
THE FILMS OF ABBAS KIAROSTAMI PRESENTED BY ISTIC ILLIC PICTURES
I am thrilled to share that the TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto’s preeminent movie theater, is screening almost the same line-up of films that I saw at the Screening Room in 2000, and that I am sponsoring the series.
Taste of Cherry, Friday, May 20, 2022 6:15 PM
The Wind Will Carry Us, Sunday, May 22, 2022 7:30 PM
The Traveler, Saturday, May 28, 2022 3:00 PM
Where Is the Friend’s Home?, Saturday, June 4, 2022 7:30 PM
And Life Goes On, Sunday, June 12, 2022 1:30 PM
Through the Olive Trees, Thursday, June 23, 2022 6:15 PM
Close-Up, Sunday, June 26, 2022 7:30 PM
Each film shown will be projected off of a 35mm print or a new 4K or 8K restoration. More about the series is available here.
Abbas Kiarostami is far from a household name, even in his native Iran, but the respect that he engendered in the film industry crossed into awe.
IndieWire’s executive editor and chief critic Eric Kohn commented after his passing, “Yesterday he was someone you see at film festivals — someone I would have a conversation with. Today, he is a legend. Hitchcock, Kubrick, Fellini, Bergman…Kiarostami.”
Martin Scorsese: “Kiarostami represents the highest level of artistry in the cinema. He was one of those rare artists with a special knowledge of the world, put into words by the great Jean Renoir: ‘Reality is always magic.’ For me, that statement sums up Kiarostami’s extraordinary body of work. Some refer to his pictures as ‘minimal’ or ‘minimalist,’ but it’s actually the opposite: Every scene in Taste of Cherry or Where Is the Friend’s House? is overflowing with beauty and surprise, patiently and exquisitely captured. He was a very special human being: quiet, elegant, modest, articulate, and quite observant — I don’t think he missed anything. Our paths crossed too seldom, and I was always glad when they did. He was a true gentleman, and, truly, one of our great artists.”
Normally, I try my best to suppress the hyperbole coming from me when I write about film. Not with Abbas Kiarostami. You can’t not notice that something special is happening in his work. You may hate these movies — no doubt that is possible, but rarely will a viewer walk out feeling “meh.”
Kiarostami worked on a different level. He worked on many different levels. He was both one of the boldest experimenters and one of the greatest humanists of cinema. No one has introduced us to more indelible characters played by non-professional actors. A poet and a renowned photographer, Kiarostami’s movies took clear inspiration from each of those fields. His recurring themes included landscapes, children, cars, the nature of art, and the lives of normal Iranian people, especially the poor. His films are a unique mixture of simplicity and complexity, and often a combination of fiction and documentary. He was a pioneer of meta, and a master of audacious endings.
ISTIC ILLIC SUPPORTS IN PERSON CINEMA
Few industries suffered during COVID as much as the arts. Symphonies, plays, musicals, concerts, dance — all had to find ways to make ends meet. Mostly, they did. They have re-opened, and their excited fans have returned to see them.
But movie theaters are different. COVID presented not only a two-year struggle for survival, it also created, or at least accelerated, another existential threat. Streaming, the most direct and formidable competition movie theaters face, became habit for almost everyone during the pandemic lockdowns.
No one would claim that watching a play on TV is the same as seeing live actors. ISTIC ILLIC believes the same is true of the movie theater experience. Watching a movie in a theater touches people in ways that are not replicated at home, and certainly not when streaming on a laptop or a phone.
Movie theaters are Enveloping
From the 1896 screening of the Lumiere brothers’ L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, when panicked moviegoers fled what they believed to be a real locomotive coming toward them, the Big Screen has always had the ability to make the audience feel, on some level, that they have been transported to another place.
Movie theaters are Uninterrupted
We all recognize what the digital age have done to attention spans. Most of us recognize how much we have tacitly consented to it. This makes a tiny action we take before a film in a theater peculiarly liberating — we turn off our phones. And it’s not just our phones: none of the temptations of home are available. Are you hungry? Do you need to go to the bathroom? The movie isn’t going to stop, so either wait or run. Sometimes when a film hits a lull — even a very short one — I feel a tug. My hand reaches toward my pocket to check my phone. But I realize that my phone is turned off, and the restlessness passes quickly. Meditation teaches people to observe their thoughts, and then to let them pass by refusing them new energy. Watching a movie in the theater is a meditation. Indeed, studies have shown that when we are absorbed in a movie, different parts of our brain are activated than in typical “task dependent” life. We are not making decisions. Our whole mind is released into the artists’ hands.
Movie theaters are Communal
Phones put us in curated worlds, politics are making us tribal, COVID kept us apart from each other. What could be more needed right now than spending two hours sharing an experience with a group of strangers? To be in a place where we signal to each other our own emotional state: contagious laughter, a collective gasp, even, occasionally, tears. Being with others makes us our experience feel more real, our emotions felt more deeply.
The TIFF Bell Lightbox — a Toronto Treasure
I don’t think you go to a play to forget or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away.
— Tom Noonan
Movie theaters are temples for laughs, thrills, learning, feeling, and empathy. I am worried that we will lose them. More specifically, I am worried about losing movie theaters that show films for adults, films that challenge us and expand our world.
I feel extraordinarily lucky to have access to the TIFF Bell Lightbox on King Street in Toronto. Their dedication to the art of cinema is beyond reproach. It extends beyond ambitious programming to film restoration, a publicly available library, and discussions and presentations by filmmakers. My favorite part of TIFF is the Cinematheque, a year-round program of director’s retrospectives, national and regional spotlights, experimental and avant-garde cinema, and classic films. It is an honor to support them. The fact that the first series that ISTIC ILLIC is sponsoring is an Abbas Kiarostami retrospetive is delicious and nutritious icing on the cake.
An exciting part of ISTIC ILLIC’s sponsorship is that we are providing free tickets to students in the UofT Cinema Studies Group. Perhaps this retrospective will create for some of them something like the transformational experiences I had in 2000.
All TIFF members can get two free tickets to all in-person TIFF Cinematheque screenings.
I hope that by promoting this sponsorship, I will encourage filmgoers to become contributing members of their local non-profit theater. For those in Toronto, I encourage you to support the Lightbox as well as the Revue, the Royal, the Paradise, and Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, whose support for cinema inspired this donation.
Where to start
For those who would ask me which movie(s) to attend, boy that’s a tough one. Taste of Cherry won the Palme D’Or, which in my mind is still the top honour that a movie could receive (I’ll take its questionable selections over The Academy’s). If that “movies as meditation” idea rang true to you, absolutely this is the place to start. Kiarostami said, “I like ambiguities. I am a filmmaker who asks audiences to bask in temporary confusion, and by so doing, express themselves.” It’s not for everyone! If you end up being impacted by these films, though, and miss your chance to see Taste of Cherry on the big screen, you’ll beat yourself up.
Due in part to Iran’s bans of sex, violence and political content in films, Kiarostami found many of his stories in the small but potent dramas that make up children’s lives. Both The Traveler and Where is the Friend’s Home? are about kids. The latter, along with And Life Goes On, and Through the Olive Trees, form an informal trilogy that will surprise and delight you.
The Traveler, though, was his international breakthrough for a reason, and it is a spiritual prequel to Close-Up, which is broadly considered the most influential of all Iranian films. It is a breathtaking masterpiece that literally leaves me overwhelmed by the beauty of life.
So to summarize: if you’re considering committing to this thing, I’ll see you at Taste of Cherry, and you can see where it goes from there. If you’re not quite as sold, start with Friend’s Home on June 12, but also block off your calendar for the 12th and the 23rd. But for God’s sake, no matter what, hell or high water, pandemic or Stanley Cup finals, I will see you at Close-Up on the 26th.
