Word: kiarostami
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...think is necessary and important," he says. "If I didn't make these kinds of films, I'd be making much more money. But that's just not my way." Panahi may still not have the international reputation of Iran's cinematic grand masters like Cannes winner Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry) or Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Kandahar), but his unblinking, gritty style is quickly turning him into the country's most courageous social filmmaker. Poverty, censorship, the justice system, women's rights - the subjects he tackles read like a list of hot-button issues guaranteed to tick off the authorities...
...long exodus of European talent to Hollywood (where he made Robocop and Showgirls). Denmark's Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves) stayed in Europe but made films in English. That leaves a new generation of world masters--Greece's Theo Angelopoulos, Taiwan's Hou Hsiao-hsien, Iran's Abbas Kiarostami--that is largely unknown to Americans. "The auteurs are there," says Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax Films. "The American marketplace is just not accepting them...
...common rap on modern world cinema is that it's way too austere. To the untutored eye, seeing Hou's Good Men, Good Women or Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees may indeed be like watching the most beautiful paint dry. But not every movie in the world has to run to the Hollywood pulse; some films can be contemplative and complex. Besides, Americans have also proved indifferent to the vital, popular film industry in India, with its delirious musical melodramas, and in Hong Kong, whose films have enough violent action to put Arnold and Sly out of business. Exoticism...
...Asia, for Cannes, often meant what was once called Asia Minor. Iran, with its handsomely spare dramas, folkloric but sophisticated, became the Asian nation of choice, and Abbas Kiarostami the cinematic imam. Kiarostami had two films in Cannes this year: an autobiographical documentary, 10 on Ten, and a Minimalist essay, Five, comprising five shots of a shoreline. No dialogue, no story, but, for the attentive viewer, much visual wit. One shot featured ducks waddling from left to right on the beach for a few minutes; then, suddenly, two ducks seem to change their minds and head back the other...
...long queues for illuminating movie chat. You could simply flag a cab. One Toronto taxi driver-we'll call him Mohsen-launched into a passionate lecture on the state of Iranian cinema, listing the names of Iranian directors who had new work on show. "Of course the master is Kiarostami," he said, as if that name would be as familiar to his passengers as Spielberg...