Tribute to Abbas Kiarostami

With the death of Abbas Kiarostami, Iran’s leading director, world cinema loses one of its true guiding lights. Attesting to the esteem in which he was held, Jean-Luc Godard once said, “Film begins with D. W. Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami.”

He said, “It’s said that in the beginning was the word, but for me the beginning is always an image. When I think about a conversation, it always starts with images. And what I love about photography is the inscription of a single moment: it’s completely ephemeral. You take the photograph, and one second later, everything has changed.”

Martin Scorsese said 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’- that statement sums up Kiarostami’s extraordinary body of work. We will be screening some of his films.