Persian Miniature Painting (Culture/History)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_miniature

Farabi Cinema Foundation (Industry)

Founded in 1983. Responsible for distribution of new Iranian films. It facilitates production loans, provided by banks, for new features made by the private sector.

Farabi consolidated the acquisition of production equipment and raw material that were difficult to access other than through the black market, particularly once the US sanctions against Iran fell into place in the early 1980s. Soon after its institution, Farabi took over the confiscated Misaghieh Studio (one of the prominent production studios that financed and produced a number of New Wave films of the 1970s), refurbished its site and equipment, and supplemented its post-production and storage facilities.

Life and Nothing More... (Film)

1992. Dir: Abbas Kiarostami.


Context:
"In June 1990, an earthquake of catastrophic proportions jolted northern Iran, killing tens of thousands of people and causing unbelievable damage. Immediately, I decided to make my way to the vicinity of Koker, a village where four years earlier I shot Where is the Friend's Home? My concern was to find out the fate of the two young actors who played in the film but I failed to locate them. However, there was so much else to see... I was observing the efforts of people trying to rebuild their lives in spite of their material and emotional sufferings. The enthusiasm for life that I was witnessing gradually changed my perspective. The tragedy of death and destruction grew paler and paler. Towards the end of the trip, I became less and less obsessed by the two boys. What was certain was this: more than 50,000 people had died, some of whom could have been boys of the same age as the two who acted in my film (the two boys at the end of this film may be taken as substitutes for the original pair). Therefore, I needed a stronger motivation to g on with the trip. Finally I felt that perhaps it was more important to help the survivors who bore no recognisable faces, but were making every effort to start a new life for themselves under very difficult conditions and in the midst of an environment of natural beauty that was going on with its old ways as if nothing had happened. Such is life, it seemed to tell them, go on, seize the days..." - Kiarostami, in Elena, p.92.

Like Close-Up, this is in a way a re-enacting of a real event or experience, namely the trip Kiarostami actually made, with his young son like in the film, to the village of Koker in Gilan region after hearing about the devastating earthquake, to find out what had happened to the two Ahmadpour boys who'd starred in Where is the Friend's House?. Also, as in the latter film, the story revolves around a search for a specific person, which will turn out to lead to something else (a journey of exploration).

The film:

• In a sense, this deals with the quintessential cinematic theme of the helpless voyeur who can do nothing but watch the world without interacting or helping (e.g. Chinatown and countless other private-eye noirs and their derivatives, Rear Window, Code Unknown, etc), with the Kiarostami surrogate starting the film as such a character but gradually learning within himself a new way of looking at the world and being touched by it.
• The film begins to show Kiarostami's growing taste for playfully putting the viewer's expectations into question, and forcing them to re-think and reconfigure what they are watching.
• It also begins to show Kiarostami's increased fondness for nature, at this stage of career. This indicates possible influence from, as well as Persian poetry of course, traditional miniature paintings in which human figures were always small in comparison to the natural setting.

Reception:

• The film was, for the most part, quite harshly received by domestic Iranian critics. Farad Golzar writing in Sureh accused Kiarostami of trivialising the earthquake and human dignity, as well as, more generally, his supposed primary interest in foreign film festivals (see Dabahi M&M p.286). Massud Farasati (see again M&M, p287), in the sam publication, went further, matching Kiarostami's gaze in the film with that of a neutral foreign observer who is glad not to have been present in the worst of the disaster but nonetheless patronises it by his presence after-the-fact. Another critic was critical of Kiarostami's choice of Vivaldi's music as opposed to some Iranian composition. Shahrokh Dulku meanwhile called the film troubling, and described Kiarostami's vision as arrogant and emotionless, hiding being sunglasses.(see Dabahi M&M p.290-1 for Dulku quotes):

• In his essay Dulku gave a full description of how Kiarostami disregards the rudiments of point of view, but ultimately concludes with a moral condemnation of Kiarostami's cinema. Of And Life Goes On he writes: "I cannot disregard one crucial issue, and that is the moral lesson that the filmmaker wants to draw, following his previous film [Where Is the Friends House?], and yet, just like in the previous film, because of weak execution, structural confusion, misconception of truth, and a convoluted vision of man and life, he reaches precisely the opposite conclusion that he wishes to reach. And Life Goes On wants to say that the "human" life is something precious and praiseworthy, but [actually] says that the "bestial" life is dear and lustful. It intends to praise and propagate human life, but in reality it propagates the bestial life. In order to give meaning to life, Kiarostami reduces it to the level of animal instincts (eating, sleeping, sex, and defecation). As opposed to noble, conscientious, and selfless men, the people in And Life Goes On are introduced at the end as base and mindless animals, ready to pull apart the dead bodies of the members of their family like carcasses, and spend their wedding night under a few feet of 'palastik'"...... Dulku proceeded to denounce the European reception of Kiarostami's cinema and concluded with a sweeping condemnation of what he takes to be Kiarostami's arrogant view of his own country and its culture: "I could have finished this review right here. But one small item, perhaps even repetitious, is left which is troubling me badly and I am going to say it. Although I believe that content criticism is not criticism at all, and a film that in form and structure has not yet reached the point of "speaking" does not deserve to be discussed in terms of its content, nevertheless I am going to say what I have to say. There are things in And Life Goes On that are extremely troubling, so troubling that one cannot just pass them by.... I will just mention them in a list and leave them to the readers' judgment: A man with a touristy appearance, whitish hair, and a "European" and "emotionless" look among the victims of the earthquake, the presence of a Renault automobile, the French poster of the film Where Is the Friends House?. ..the repeated appearance of the Red Cross cars, overwhelming emphasis on the instinctual (and not intellectual) aspects of life, and more importantly, a train of thought that looks at life not face to face and eyeball to eyeball but from above (high on top), and with a pair of dark glasses.... This arrogant, emotionless, and calculating look inevitably represents an unreal picture of life, a picture about which (and in my view about Kiarostami's cinema in general) the judgment of Mohammad Hossein Ruhi [another critic] as an accurate doubt is applicable: "What kind of cinema is this?"" 

• On the other hand, the film was warmly greeted in Cannes, following its screening in the Un Certain Regard strand and winning the Rossellini prize. It helped cement Kiarostami's new status in Western circles.

References:
Elena, 104.

The Night it Rained (Film)

1967. Dir: Kamran Shirdel.


A precursor of Iranian cinema's self-reflexive traditions...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9fIl44qDLY