Retrospective for Iranian master
Ahmad Kiarostami has lived in San Francisco for two decades, making his own life as a tech entrepreneur. But lately, he’s found himself drawn to the family business.
His father was Abbas Kiarostami, the master director widely considered to be Iran’s greatest filmmaker. Ahmad has decided that part of his life’s work will be to preserve the legacy of his father, who died in 2016. Part of that includes restoring his films.
“When my daughter was 6, I showed her my father’s short film called ‘Colors,’ ” Kiarostami recalled. “When it was finished my daughter said, ‘Where are the colors?’ Because everything was gray. So I’m happy that everything is restored, and clean, and with good colors, and I’m excited to see them on the big screen.”
Abbas Kiarostami’s films are the subject of a major retrospective beginning this weekend at both the Roxie Theater in San Francisco and the Berkeley Art Museum’s Pacific Film Archive. The Roxie portion will have five films and a program of children’s shorts — Kiarostami began as a director of children’s films — over the next three weekends. BAMPFA’s retrospective is for completists, with more than two dozen films and shorts that won’t wrap up until almost Christmas.
The series is a collaboration between MK2 and Janus Films with help from the Kiarostami Foundation, founded by Ahmad Kiarostami. The foundation, which includes directors Richard Linklater and Alejandro Iñárritu and producer Tom Luddy among its board of directors, focuses not only on restoration but also completing unfinished projects (the film “24 Frames”); organizing the late filmmaker’s extensive files, notes, papers and photography work; and it also has created an art residency program (Culturistan) in France.
Ahmad Kiarostami will be in attendance at select Roxie screenings and in person for Q&A after “Where Is the Friend’s House?” on Aug. 17. He will also appear at se
lect screenings at BAMPFA, beginning with an Aug. 28 screening of “The Traveler.”
Abbas Kiarostami became internationally known with the groundbreaking “CloseUp” (screening 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 3, at the Roxie; Aug. 18 and Oct. 19 at BAMPFA), a fascinating blend of documentary and fiction based on the true story of a man who was arrested for impersonating famed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
Kiarostami’s notable films include “Taste of Cherry” (Nov. 1, BAMPFA), about a man wishing to commit suicide, which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997; “The Wind Will Carry Us” (7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 4 and Nov. 3 at BAMPFA), my personal favorite about a TV crew hoping to film a rural ritual; and the Frenchmade “Certified Copy” (Dec. 14, BAMPFA), a romance starring Juliette Binoche.
But before that, he was primarily a director of films featuring children. A fabulous part of this retrospective is devoted to that work. “The Traveler” (6:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 2 at BAMPFA; Aug. 11 at Roxie), his first feature from 1974 that has been compared to “The 400 Blows,” is a great place to start. A selection of children’s shorts screens Aug. 17 at the Roxie.
Ahmad Kiarostami said he loved his father’s early work but had to get used to his eventual way of uncompromising filmmaking.
“The one thing he made I really didn’t like was ‘Close Up,’ ” Ahmad said. “Before that, he was making films about or for children. That was the first thing he did that was neither. And I couldn’t understand it; it was not my father. I really didn’t like it. But now, if I have to pick one, that’s probably my most favorite.”
About “Taste of Cherry,” Ahmad said, “That was a very difficult film for me to watch. The whole concept of committing suicide and all the topics in that film I really couldn’t understand. But as I grew older, I connected with that film a lot more. Not the suicide part, but life and how you see it as you grow older, or how things change.”
One element of the elder Kiarostami’s work is his emphasis on stories about men. Women often don’t figure prominently in his films. There’s a reason for this. Ahmad Kiarostami explained that there was a ridiculous rule imposed by the government that demanded that women wear a hijab at all times — even in scenes set in their own homes, where women don’t generally wear headscarves.
“He said, ‘If I have to show inside the home and I make the woman wear a hijab, that’s going to make the film look really fake and I can’t do it,’ ” Ahmad recalls his father saying. “In some films, you’ll see women wearing scarves in bed, which is laughable.”
Kiarostami’s later films were not shown in Iran, and late in his career he began to make films abroad. “Certified Copy” and “Like Someone in Love” (Dec. 21, BAMPFA), which was filmed in Japan, were attempts to tell women’s stories without restrictions.
He probably would have continued to make films outside of Iran, but the filmmaker died in July 2016 of an intestinal issue in Paris, where he had traveled for treatment. Ahmad wasn’t able to get to Paris in time to see his father alive.
The last time he saw him was about six months earlier, in Toronto, where his father’s photography exhibit and a film retrospective were held.
“He was completely healthy,” Ahmad said. “I remember we were walking the very last day in Toronto and we were passing a store that had nice hats. And he looks at me as I’m losing my hair, and he said, ‘It’s time,’ and he bought me a hat. For some reason I thought, ‘This is the last thing I’m going to have with him.’ Then I thought, ‘No, no, this is nonsense.’ But it was the last time I saw him.”