阿巴斯（卫报）

Abbas Kiarostami
Acclaimed Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami spoke about working with non-actors, losing enthusiasm for digital video and why his car is his best friend, before receiving the Fellowship of the British Film Institute from Anthony Minghella. Here's a full transcript

* guardian.co.uk,
* Thursday April 28 2005

Geoff Andrew: Thank you, Abbas, for coming here again. It's wonderful to have you back. And thank you Vali for translating. I chose Close-Up [for the screening] because it's one of your great movies. One thing I've always wanted to ask you about Close-Up: towards the end, when Sabzian meets Makhmalbaf, the sound goes off. Did it really go off?

Abbas Kiarostami (speaking through interpreter Vali Mahlouji): I would like to welcome everybody here, especially my very good friends who I've just seen in the audience. Close-Up is a very particular film in my oeuvre. It's a film that was made in a very particular way; mainly because I didn't really have the time to think about how to go about making the film. I'll give a lengthy response to Geoff's question here, and maybe I'll cover some other questions that may crop up later.

I had intended to make another film, called Pocket Money, which was to be about children at a school. The first group was ready, but then I read a report in the newspaper about the incident. I was very much intrigued by the story - it came into my dreams and I was very much influenced by it. So I called my producer and asked that we put aside Pocket Money and start something else, and he agreed. So we decided to take the cameras to the prison instead of to the school and started shooting. It was a 40-day shoot, with many difficulties, because the people who were in the original, real story, agreed to basically re-enact the negative roles they had been playing. So I was really expecting, everyday, to be told by these actors that they wanted to pull out, because it's a really difficult thing to get people to play such negative roles and be documented on film. I did not have a script. I made notes in the evenings and we filmed during the day over 40 days. Maybe you won't believe me but I didn't sleep a wink for those 40 nights. You saw the beginning of the film, when I have a conversation with Sabzian. I have a picture from the end of the shoot, and in it I have lost all my hair.

Believe me, I am still very surprised that I managed to make that film. When I actually look back on that film, I really feel that I was not the director but instead just a member of the audience. Because the film made itself, to a large extent. The characters involved were very real, I wasn't directing the actors so much as being directed by them. So it was a very particular film. One of the very worrying aspects of the film is exactly what Geoff has asked about. I asked Makhmalbaf, the director, to come and meet Sabzian on his release from prison. Sabzian had no idea what was going to happen on that day and who he was going to meet. That moment is very real, when Sabzian meets his idol [and Sabzian bursts into tears]. They got on the motorcycle and we followed them in the car without Sabzian's knowledge that we were filming. I was listening to their conversation. What was very difficult was that one of the characters did not know that he was in front of a camera whereas the other one did. And the one who did was ready with his "script". Makhmalbaf discussed many issues that he had intended to bring to the film, so he was very much an actor. We shot this sequence, and obviously we couldn't repeat it. Sabzian embraced Makhmalbaf very affectionately and expressed what he really felt; Makhmalbaf in essence was repeating slogans or whatever he wanted to say, so I removed my headphones and stopped listening.

So after a sleepless night, I came to the conclusion that what I should do is say that there was a problem with the sound. So I very much thank Makhmalbaf for being the cause of the situation that arose and which forced me to eliminate the sound. And this is something that has affected the films and the way that I've made films since. I take my lead from Renoir, the painter, who says that if you drip paint on your canvas, don't get too worried about it; instead try to use the drip as an element and evolve something else out of it. All our film-making is dedicated to all the mistakes that we make.

GA: You've answered about five of my questions. I was going to ask you about your films growing out of one another, but you've answered that because you've obviously learned something from Close-Up that you've continued with. I mean, for instance, a film like Ten is one where you've encouraged the people in it to make the film for you. You've abandoned all normal notions of scriptwriting and indeed the distinction between documentary and fiction.

AK: That's a very good point, and it's very much related to the way Close-Up has affected later films that I've made. I think the freedom that I allowed my actors in Ten very much goes back to my experience making Close-Up. In this type of cinema, whether working with actors or non-actors, as much as you do direct them, if you allow yourself to be directed by them, then the end result will be much more pleasing. The real and individual strengths of the actors is allowed to be expressed and is something that does affect the audience very deeply.

GA: The next clip that we saw was from And Life Goes On, which was also a film that grew out of another film - in this case, Where Is The Friend's House? But it's also the first of your films that deals with the very big question, the relationship between life and death. I tried to show that in the clip, where we see a man who says, "Whatever happened in this earthquake, we still need a toilet." And it seems to me that most of your films since have been dealing with this relationship between life and death.

AB: I haven't a ready answer to this question. I thought that I had been asked every kind of question possible, but this is pretty new, so I haven't a prepared answer. It is a very important film, Life And Nothing More, in that what was filmed was inspired by a journey I had made just three days after an earthquake. And I speak not only of the film itself but also of the experience of being in that place, where only three days before 50,000 people had died. For the survivors, it was as if they were reborn, having experienced death around them. The earthquake had happened at four or five in the morning, so in a sense everybody could have been dead and it was almost accidental that they hadn't died. So I didn't just see myself as a film director here, but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death. So this was a very big influence on me, and the issue of life and death from then on does recur in my films. There is also the fact of my age [65]. It isn't so much a worry on my mind but it is an issue that has come up in my films - I have to go back and see where it crops up. But this is a question that has taken me aback and I have to think about it.

GA: Well, it crops up in A Taste Of Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us, which we saw next. The latter is quite an interesting film because many of the characters are heard, but not seen. For instance, in that clip, the woman [teashop owner] is talking to someone parking a car, who we never see. And there are about 13 or 14 characters in the film who remain invisible. Why did you make a film with so many invisible characters?

AK: I've been asked this question before...

GA: By me.

AK: And I have an answer. My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated. This was pointed out to me by somebody who referred to the paintings of Rembrandt and his use of light: some elements are highlighted while others are obscured or even pushed back into the dark. And it's something that we do - we bring out elements that we want to emphasise. I'm not claiming or denying that I have done such a thing but I do believe in [Robert] Bresson's method of creation through omission, not through addition.

GA: The other thing that's quite interesting about that clip is that the main character seems to be working on a film or something - you're never quite sure what he's up to. He wears slightly tinted glasses and he takes photos and seems to be perhaps a self-portrait. Some people have said that there's a strong element of self-critique in your work; there are surrogate Abbases in your films.

AK: That may very well be true. I think it's the sort of question I should be responding to in a psychoanalyst's chair. But I do think that we are sometimes, as directors, guilty of portraying or asking our actors to behave in certain ways that are perhaps not very morally acceptable. I'm not the only one.

GA: One more thing about The Wind Will Carry Us. This scene takes place in a teashop. That's not a real teashop. You actually set this scene in a real village which you then changed quite a lot. And this brings us back to the Close Up thing of cutting off the sound. You've often said that in order to get to the truth, you have to tell lies. Can you say why you believe that?

AK: It is very true because in the actual village where we shot, the people work very hard during the day and when they return home in the afternoon, they don't actually sit around at a coffee shop as you see in the film, so we did set up the shop to provide a scene for our characters to strike up a dialogue with the people. We found that it was very difficult to have conversations with village people because they were not willing to stay put long enough to talk to us. So we built this set so as to have this chance. In fact, the lady in the film was not even from that location - she came from another village; we couldn't find anyone in the village who would actually do it. And you would probably be interested to know that after two days she told us that she would not be able to continue with the shoot and that she would send her daughter instead. And there was no way we could make her understand that her daughter was of no use to us, and that it was her that we needed. I think that her brilliant acting was because she really did not understand this, how indispensable she was to our shoot. Perhaps if she had understood this, she might not have worked so beautifully.

GA: Obviously, people felt that The Wind Will Carry Us was a fiction film, but a lot of that stuff was pretty real. And with Ten, people did actually believe it was a documentary. Yes, it was partly inspired by the true lives of Mania Akbari and her son, but there was an awful lot of fiction in there as well. Now, at one point you seemed very taken with digital technology - you not only made ABC Africa but you also made Five and 10 on Ten. Do you still feel as favourably towards digital cinema as you did when you were making those films?

AK: It's a big question and I feel that I ought to say a lot about it but [addressing the audience] I know that you're tired and you've seen the film, so I'll try to condense my answer. I think this comes up a lot in discussions about fiction versus documentary, but I believe there's only good cinema and bad cinema.

Good cinema is what we can believe and bad cinema is what we can't believe. What you see and believe in is very much what I'm interested in. And it's not so much a question of whether we've shot it through 35mm or digital video; what is important is whether the audience accepts it as real. It's very true that non-actors feel more comfortable in front of a digital camera, without the lights and the large crowd around them, and we arrive at much more intimate moments with them. So I do believe that a film like Ten could never have been made with a 35mm camera. The first part of the film lasts 17 minutes, and by the end of that part, the kid has totally forgotten the camera. Others would look at the camera, even drivers in neighbouring cars would look at the camera, but the kid himself was not noticing the camera at all. So a digital camera does have many advantages and I was a believer that digital video would be a big influence on film-making.

But I have somewhat lost my enthusiasm in the last four or five years. Mainly because film students using digital video these days have not really produced anything which is more than superficial or simplistic; so I have my doubts. Despite the great advantages of digital video and the great ease of using the medium, still those who use it have first to understand the sensitivities of how to best use the medium.

GA: I should point out that Five is opening here and it's a real exploration of what you can do with digital cinema. But after that Abbas went to make an episode for the film Tickets, which he shot on 35mm. So you did go back to 35mm, but would you make more digital films?

AK: It very much depends. I think that if you're a digital thinker, you can use a digital camera. It would have been impossible to create Five without a digital camera. Five was shot with one camera in moonlight with no other equipment. If we're not going to take full advantage of digital, then 35mm is a better medium. Especially for shooting dramas - I have no problem with 35mm. It seems that film-makers are being divided between those working in digital and those who are not. I think it's not something predetermined - it all depends on what project we have in mind, and on that basis we choose the medium.

GA: We've sort of moved forward in your career, so at this point I'd like to go back to your beginnings. The photographer Dorothea Lange said, "It's no accident that the photographer becomes the photographer, any more than the lion tamer becoming a lion tamer." But knowing about how you started in film, do you think it was an accident that you became a film-maker?

AK: I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question. My mind was very much on you [addressing the audience], whether you're tired or whether you want to ask questions. [After interpreter repeats the question] It's a simple question but it has a difficult answer. I think I'm no different to my friends who are doctors or businessmen or architects - we all started watching films of the golden age together. But whether I'm making films or writing poetry or doing photography, it's very much rooted in my sense of unease. And that's really where everything goes back to.

GA: Unease about what? Or is it more to do with uncertainty?

Interpreter: Unsettled.

Member of the audience: The word is restlessness.

GA: Your cinema seems to be a cinema of questions - you don't offer answers, you make us think about questions all the time, and in fact your photography is like that, and so are your poems.

AK: I'm only going to repeat myself here. Nothing of what I've done started from an intention as such. I never intended to write poems, nor to be a photographer, nor to be a film-maker. I just took many, many pictures and I would put them in an album, and then some years later I decided to show them and suddenly I was called a photographer. Same thing with my poetry. They're notes that I'd written in a book and it may be considered poetry. And I would remind you that if you visit the V&A, you can see my photography there.

GA: Why did you take so long to let us see your photography, or indeed to read your poems? You've been doing both for a very long time but it's only been in the last five or six years that we've been able to see that work.

AK: As I said, I never thought that they were being produced to be shown. They were really just an excuse for me to spend time in nature.

GA: When you came here the last time, it was with A Taste of Cherry, which won you the Palme d'Or. And The Wind Will Carry Us went on to win a major prize in Venice. And it really seemed that you had become an internationally-famous film-maker in a way that you had never been before. It's not like it's stopped you being an Iranian film-maker; you still live and make films there, but you're regarded more as a world film-maker. Would you agree with that assessment and also, how have you dealt with the fame and pressures that has brought?

AK: We don't arrive at anything easily and often there's a high price to pay, and maybe in our country the price is even higher. Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can't limit it to one particular culture. My last experience of film-making was Tickets, a three-episode film in Italy, the third of which is directed by myself. It's not for me to judge whether it's a good film or a bad film, but what I could say is that nobody had a cultural or linguistic issue with what was produced. If I do continue to have the opportunity to work in Iran, that's very much what I'd prefer to do. And having an international voice is not really about whether we speak Persian or any other language. I think, just as footballers play better at home, maybe film-makers, too, create better at home, even though the rules of football are the same wherever you go.

GA: I know nothing about football, so I'll hand over to you, the audience, now.

Question 1: Did you stay in contact with Mr Sabzian after Close-Up?

AK: The last time I was in contact with him was three days ago. I hadn't heard from him for six or seven months. We were meant to attend a festival in Korea together, but they didn't invite him to attend. He accused me, and he was right to, because I had asked them not to invite him. Because it's very difficult for people like him if they leave the country. I told him that I would be back, and that we would shoot a short film together. He was very happy, so I'm now wondering what I'm going to shoot with him. Nothing has changed in his life; he's still living as you've seen. Sometimes he trades in foreign DVDs in the black market. I thought I would see my films at his stall. In fact, he is more recognised than me in Tehran these days. At a festival where a [Sergei] Parajanov film was being screened, there was no room for me, and he saw me from within the crowd and he came out so that I could go into the auditorium.

GA: Perhaps you should make a film about somebody impersonating Sabzian.

Question 2: How do you get these non-actors to be so natural? Do you have a script? How does the Iranian government feel about the issues raised by your actors in your films?

AK: I don't have very complete scripts for my films. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character who's in my mind in reality. When I find the character, I try to spend time with them and get to know them very well. Therefore my notes are not from the character that I had in my mind before, but are instead based on the people I've met in real life. It's a long process, it may take six months. I only make notes, I don't write dialogues in full. And the notes are very much based on my knowledge of that person. Therefore when we start shooting I don't have rehearsals with them at all. So, rather than pulling them towards myself, I travel closer to them; it's very much closer to the real person than anything I try to create. So I give them something but I also take from them.

There's a Rumi poem that helps to explains this - it goes something like this: You are like the ball subject to my polo stick; I set you in motion, but once you're off and running, I am the one in pursuit. Therefore, when you see the end result, it's difficult to see who's the director, me or them. Ultimately, everything belongs to the actors - we just manage the situation. This kind of directing, I think, is very similar to being a football coach. You prepare your players and place them in the right places, but once the game is on, there's nothing much you can do - you can smoke a cigarette or get nervous, but you can't do much. While shooting Ten I was sitting in the backseat, but I didn't interfere. Sometimes, I was following in another car, so I was not even present on the "set", because I thought they would work better in my absence. Directors don't always create, they can also destroy with too many demands. Using non-actors has its own rules and really requires that you allow them to do their own thing.

GA: Do you think you prefer this method because of the way you started out at Kanoon [Iran's Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults], working very often with children, where you probably had to work that way?

AK: This is very much rooted in that period of my life. If I hadn't stated with children I would never have arrived at this style. Children are very strong and independent characters and can come up with more interesting things than Marlon Brando, and it's sometimes very difficult to direct or order them to do something. When I met Akira Kurosawa in Japan, one question he asked me was, "How did you actually make the children act the way they do? I do have children in my films but I find that I reduce and reduce their presence until I have to get rid of them because there's no way that I can direct them." My own thought is that one is very grand, like an emperor on a horse, and it's very hard for a child to relate to that. In order to be able to cooperate with a child, you have to come down to below their level in order to communicate with them. Actors are also like children.

Question 3: Can you talk about your relationship with cars.

AK: My car's my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me. We're in the most comfortable seats because we're not facing each other, but sitting side by side. We don't look at each other, but instead do so only when we want to. We're allowed to look around without appearing rude. We have a big screen in front of us and side views. Silence doesn't seem heavy or difficult. Nobody serves anybody. And many other aspects. One most important thing is that it transports us from one place to another.

Question 4: I'm an American and I'm sometimes appalled with the anti-Iranian bias in American media. I'd like to think that your films can create more understanding between Americans and Iranians, but I fear that US media encourages Americans to think in somewhat simplistic ways. I wonder if they can appreciate the subtlety of Iranian culture and of your films in particular. What are your thoughts on this?

AK: Thank you for your very positive view on the issue. Unfortunately, cinema critics are very few in America, 400-500 people, but there are more critics of Iran. As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that's less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.

Question 5: What's wonderful about your films is that they depict the reality of the Iranian people after the revolution. How does the current government in Iran react to your films?

AK: The Iranian government as a whole has no relationship with my films. They're not particularly interested, perhaps this kind of cinema is not very interesting to them. And I'm not sure that my films show the reality of life in Iran; we show different aspects of life. Iran is a very extensive and expansive place, and sometimes, even for us who live there, some of the realities are very hard to comprehend. But on the whole, the government grapples with more important issues and we can maybe say that these films don't really exist for them. It's not about whether they like it or don't; it's just not very important to them.

Question 6: I have a question about the quote which appears at the front of the Alberto Elena book. Jean-Luc Godard famously said: "Film begins with DW Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami." What do you feel about this?

AK: This is a very good opportunity for me to talk about this, and I think that Jean-Luc Godard would be very happy for me to make a comment about what he said. This comment was made six or seven years ago after I had made Life And Nothing More. So, therefore, if this book had been published six or seven years ago, he would have been very happy. But he doesn't believe this any more. And in every interview now, with no provocation, he makes a sly comment about me, so I don't think he believes that statement any more. So I correct, on his behalf, what has been said, and hope that he's happy about what I've said. I do think I'm diverting cinema off its course a little bit, especially with Ten.

GA: I should point out that a colleague of mine interviewed Jean-Luc Godard last week and asked him this question, and as it turns out, I don't think Godard has seen one of your films for several years. He's not been keeping up, but he really should. At this point, we'll have to stop the questions and welcome the chair of the British Film Institute, Anthony Minghella.

Anthony Minghella: When I became the chair of the British Film Institute, I didn't understand how much of my time would be taken up with trying to make a case for the British Film Institute: what it's for, why it exists, why it needs its money. And then there are things like tonight, where we see an extraordinary film and listen to a master of the cinema, and it all becomes very clear. I wish that all the people who should be giving us money could have been here this evening, but instead we welcome all our Iranian friends.

The BFI exists to celebrate all poets of world cinema, of the past and present. Clearly we have a great cinema poet with us this evening. There's a great tradition at the BFI of giving fellowships and I thought one of the great jobs that I'd have at the BFI would be to give them out on a regular basis, but this is the first one that I'm giving out in my tenure. I'm giving it not by myself, but on behalf of the BFI board of governors who voted unanimously to award Abbas Kiarostami the Fellowship of the British Film Institute. It's a great honour and a great privilege, and I do it on behalf of all of us who work at the BFI, who care about film and world cinema, and the great artistry that exists in world cinema. He is a great artist and a poet. I sometimes think that if Samuel Beckett made films, he'd make them like Kiarostami makes them. So it's my honour to give you this, Abbas.

AK: Thank you so much. This is a very great pleasure, a great honour, to get such a valuable prize, especially from you.