The following is an extract from Abbas Kiarostami by Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa

and Jonathan Rosenbaum (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming: late

2002/early 2003) one of the initial books in a new series edited by James
Naremore that is devoted to neglected contemporary filmmakers. Abbas
Kiarostami contains separate essays by Rosenbaum and Saeed-Vafa followed
first by this dialogue, then by an extended interview with Kiarostami
conducted by both authors.

***

I
JONATHAN ROSENBAUM: You were the one who originally had the idea of
proposing that we do this book together. And maybe we should both consider
why we thought it was a good idea.

MEHRNAZ SAEED-VAFA: Basically, as far as I remember, we had a lot of

interesting dialogues about Iranian cinema and Kiarostami, and I thought it
would be a great idea to put our effort into a book. We started our dialogue
in 1992, at a time when Kiarostami was still was getting discovered in
France, but unknown in the United States. And I respected you highly as a
critic and I knew that you were respected among other readers outside the
United States as well as inside. Part of me really wanted you to get
interested in this cinema so that you would write about it. I knew that if I
spoke about how great either Kiarostami or some other Iranian filmmakers
were, no one would believe me. They would say, Oh, shes Iranian and she
wants to promote her own culture here. But if you spoke about it no one
would say that. By the same token, if you spoke highly of Kiarostami or
Iranian cinema, Iranians in Iran would trust you more than me, because if I
did that theyd say, Shes one of us. And then, much later, I thought it
would be interesting to compare how you see him and I see him, and to put
that in a book for other people to see how both of us, coming from different
backgrounds

JR: I think the difference between our backgrounds is important a Jewish

American man and an Islamic Iranian woman despite the fact that our
tastes in film tend to be similar. (We even had a little bit of the same
formation as filmgoers insofar as we were both living in London in the mid
70s, well over a decade before we first met in Chicago.) One thing that also
occurs to me is that, in a funny sort of way, both America and Iran are very
deprived in their access to information about cinema. In Iran, this is largely
due to censorship and because of the way everything is conveyed by gossip
most often very unreliable gossip. And in this country, paradoxically, where
the big companies tend to rule the discourse we have about movies, we
havent had any images at all of Iran except for what weve started to get in
relation to Iranian films.
Even in that area, theres a lot of hearsay and guesswork thats going on
constantly, sometimes making the most basic information hard to access. Do
you remember how we both spent months trying to determine whether or
not The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) was banned in Iran and if so, what the
censors objections were? Then we both went to the Fajr Film Festival early
this year [February, 2001] and were told that the only reason why it hadnt
opened in Iran was that it was decided that the film wouldnt make much
money! Of course, the fact that Iranian censors arent obliged to give any
explanations affects this overall lack of information. In any case, considering
the somewhat different contacts and resources we both have, it seemed that
if we pooled these things, perhaps we could both learn more.

MS: The physical distance between the two countries is of course reduced
now with the Internet. But because of all the years of political hostility
between these countries, theres not much exchange, especially from the
side of America. I think Iranians know more about Americans than Americans
know about Iranians. We were brought up with American culture, Western
culture.

JR: I remember you telling me about the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies
you saw in Tehran as a child, which really surprised me at the time.

MS: Theres even an interesting link one could make between Orderly or
Disorderly (1981) [also known as Regularly or Irregularly Ed] and The
Disorderly Orderly (1964) a Jerry Lewis film directed by Frank Tashlin quite
apart from the similarity of the English titles. But the chaos in Lewiss film is
internalized, whereas in Kiarostamis film its completely externalized.

I had also seen major American cities before coming here, in a lot of
documentaries and feature films. I had a very good idea of where I was
coming to. But even a critic like you who reads a lot and travels a lot you
still have ideas about Iran that are based on a lack of proper information.

JR: Im sure that must be true. I was quite startled, for instance, when I
learned that 65% of the current Iranian population is under 25 and even
more taken aback when I learned that the ages when you can vote and get
married in Iran are much younger than they are in western countries. This
suggests that the paradigms we use for understanding Iran are often faulty
to begin with. Could you provide me with any other examples?

MS: Well, I frequently encounter in a lot of Americans a confusion between

the political identity and the traditional identity of Iranians. Its also
questionable how much you can actually learn about a given culture through
films, which applies to Iranians understanding Americans as well as vice
versa. The biggest problem is the absence of a context for new information.
For example, the issue of suicide in Taste of Cherry (1997) as Islamically
incorrect was allowed to overshadow almost everything else that was said in
the U.S. about the film.

JR: We should acknowledge that our viewpoints about Kiarostami differ in

terms of what kind of information we consider most important. For me,
Kiarostami is first of all a global filmmaker and secondarily an Iranian
filmmaker. For you, hes first of all an Iranian filmmaker. Even though Im
interested in learning about Iran through Iranian cinema, and his films are
certainly a part of that, I feel that I go to his films to learn about the world,
not just Iran. There are surely other Iranian filmmakers who could tell me
more about Iran than he can, but I dont think that there are any other
Iranian filmmakers now who could tell me as much about the world in
general.

MS: How do you mean? Cinematically or politically or?

JR: I compare him to Godard in the 60s the time extending from, say, The
Married Woman to Weekend: only a stretch of about three years, 1964 to
1967, though it encompasses eight features and several shorts. If you
wanted to know what was going on in the western world at that time, youd
go to his movies because he had this capacity to pick up on all these things
that were current in the culture, and it wasnt necessarily because he was
seeking this. It was just because he was sufficiently open to it in terms of his
interests and I guess it is significant that Godard was one of the first to pick
up on Kiarostamis importance. (He once told me how he stayed over in Paris
a few extra days on one of his trips from Switzerland in order to see more of
his films.)

Godard was reflecting what was going on through the culture of cities and I
think that in the 60s, to know what was going on in the world, cities were
very important. Today, I suspect that the country, the suburbs, and the sticks
are more important. The reason why is that the whole world is united now by
what the large multinational companies are doing everywhere, and you can
see more of what theyre doing in the country than you can in the city. The
mobile phone in The Wind Will Carry Us is a perfect example. Or you might
recall that when this film finally opened in Chicago, this was at the same
time they were doing those recounts of the votes during the presidential
election. And I wrote in the Reader that the film was actually speaking to this
situation. How? Because theres an enormous rift now between whats
happening in the media and whats happening in everyday life a rift that
gets expressed through ones perception of time, ones body language, and
all sorts of other things. If you turned to someone on the street during that
post-election period, you could immediately bond with them about what was
going on, but if you turned on the TV, all youd encounter was people
screaming at one another. It was a different reality. This kind of discrepancy
is captured perfectly in The Wind Will Carry Us, which shows such a division
quite comically. So it shouldnt be so surprising that what hes doing is
appreciated and recognized as relevant by people across the world.

MS: Yeah. They see something in The Wind Will Carry Us, and although the
hero is a man, I can see my own reflection in him. Im like him too, driven by
anxiety to do lots of stuff and be preoccupied, not be there you know, as I
put it in my article [in Abbas Kiarostami Ed], hes an image of modern man.

JR: Yes, and of course were media people, too. You know, maybe the fact
that Kiarostami is so contemporary is what makes him so controversial.

MS: Do you mean controversial inside Iran, or outside?

JR: Both. But what Im mainly thinking about now is how some of my
colleagues including one critic in Buenos Aires and another one in
Melbourne, among others really dislike ABC Africa (2001), and Im not even
sure why. Its also just been rejected by the New York Film Festival. I can
certainly agree with the point you made to Kiarostami in Tehran, when we
saw the film in rough cut that it should have been called ABC Uganda and
not ABC Africa. But otherwise it seems to me a perfectly respectable minor
work that responsibly fulfills its own social agenda, and I find the whole latter
section basically everything from the visit to the hospital onwards quite
powerful. So Im not clear at this point what the real objections are unless
its a disapproval of him showing so many kids dancing, or maybe just
making a film outside Iran. They say its lazy, for one thing

MS: Im not sure what they mean by lazy, either but if theyre right, thats
a virtue, not a vice.

JR: What do you mean?

MS: One sign of mastery is for the work to look extremely simple, as if
anyone can do it. Think of Chaplins direction, which looks like he simply
found his shots rather than worked hard to find them. The arrangement of
shots in ABC Africa and the overall rhythm is really musical, but some people
dont notice this.
JR: We know that he did work on the editing a long time, partly because he
hadnt edited digital video before. I can remember when we saw it for the
first time that it didnt look so much like a Kiarostami film during the first half
maybe because the exposition and interviews seemed relatively
conventional.

MS: But isnt this information important to the film?

JR: Of course it is.

MS: This is the first Kiarostami film in which the subject might be said to
overwhelm the treatment of it which maybe creates a conflict in some
peoples minds.

JR: Yes, which is often a conflict between whats artful and whats socially
useful.

MS: But what did they expect from Kiarostami, anyway, knowing his style?

JR: Maybe the fact that so much is expected from him these days is partially
to blame. Do you think that expectations of this kind are partly behind the
hostility towards his work in Iran, despite the fact that hes been such a
major influence there?

MS: I dont believe theres hostility against him just a certain kind of
criticism. Some think hes overrated, but theyre not ruling him out. And of
course his last two films havent even opened there commercially yetThe
fact that hes won so many prizes in festivals is partly why his cinema has
been so influential, especially for younger filmmakers who in fact often do
get prizes of their own when they follow his lead.

JR: Part of the problem is that he tends to be either deified or demonized. For
the same reason, some people may place too much value on his still
photography or his poetry. I happen to like the former much more than the
latter, maybe because it seems more relevant to his films.

MS: I agree, although I like the rhythm of his poetry and the atmosphere of
some of his landscapes. But its only in his cinema that these things become
truly meaningful. The same thing applies to Paradjanovs collages and
paintings.

JR: Another example I can give for Kiarostamis global relevance at least as
far back as Close-up (1990) is the striking and interesting similarity between
that film and the story of John Guares play Six Degrees of Separation,
which surfaced somewhat later, and which eventually became a film as well.
That was also based on a true story. A young black man befriended a very
well-to-do New York couple, claiming to be the son of Sidney Poitier and
offering to get them involved in a Broadway show that he claimed his father
was putting on. He got invited to be the couples houseguest, and it was
some time before his fraud was uncovered. The fact that something so
similar could happen in New York and Tehran fascinates me, though some of
the differences are also important, such as the issue of race in the Guare
play. Yet as you point out in your essay [in Abbas Kirostami Ed], the issue of
ethnicity, which some westerners may not notice the fact that Sabzian
happens to be Turkish plays a significant role in Close-up. (In fact, the
multiculturalism of Kiarostamis films is another global aspect of them.) I
remember you were saying back in 1992, when I saw the film for the first
time in Toronto, that the kind of respect that cinema has in Iran immediately
gives a kind of empowerment to people who are filmmakers. Ordinary people
defer to them, and that becomes a very interesting subject in itself; in fact,
every film Kiarostami has made since then relates to this theme in one way
or another.

MS: Its interesting. When I was a teenager, everyone was a poet, but now
everyone is a filmmaker. Especially after the Revolution, seeing that for the
first time so many filmmakers were not educated in film and many were not
educated, period. But becoming a filmmaker or artist originally conferred a
status that was reserved only for the privileged or the educated, and then,
all of a sudden, it became something non-educated people could achieve, if
they worked hard to get there.

JR: Yes, and Makhmalbaf became the role model for that, as Close-up shows.
You compare the function of cinema in Iran to that of basketball for black
youth in the U.S., which is also quite suggestive. Its a ticket to class mobility
you might even describe it as a way to get out of town, if you live in a
suburb or a village.

MS: Well, thats changed now. In Iran its no longer such a big deal to make a
film. Kiarostami has raised the bar, so that now you have to win a prize in a
major film festival, preferably Cannes, to really get somewhere. You know,
they now discuss film in the Iranian Parliament; thats how important its
become. Its a political issue to be a filmmaker.

JR: Thats been especially true since the arrest of Tahmineh Milani a few days
ago apparently more because of her recent statements to the press than
because of her last film, which was screened at Fajr in February. What kind
of discussions do they have about films in Parliament?

MS: Well, sometimes they discuss the content and impact of films, and
sometimes you have controversy about particular films and different points-
of-view, such as in which other countries a film is being seen and discussed.
But earlier, in the first decade after the Revolution, when they werent sure
about a film policy, it was more of a political issue. Should we send this film
outside or not? Of course now its changed. Originally every film had to go
through the Fajr Film Festival in order to get permission to be shown in
foreign festivals or even to be shown inside the country. Now certain films
like The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000) can get permission to be shown outside
but not inside.

JR: You know, Im hoping that, if this book gets translated into Farsi, it can
answer certain questions in Iran as well as over here such as what
Americans see in Kiarostami. One American, anyway.

MS: Actually, while working with you, Im realizing more that when you come
from a different culture and history, you can appreciate certain things
differently.

JR: Yes. I think an important part of your background, explaining where

youre coming from which you discuss briefly in your essay is that you
were the first Iranian to defend Bresson in print, at least at any length. When
was this?

MS: In 1978.

JR: So, right around the time of the Revolution.

MS: Yes, just two years before.

JR: I think, if Im not mistaken, that hes a figure who is very important in Iran
today partially, I assume, because spiritual artists are valued highly, which
is why one encounters so many references to Dostoevsky and Kafka, for
example. I also have this theory that Bressons style rose in part out of his
experience of having been a prisoner in an internment camp. I feel that his
films are about souls in hiding about keeping your humanity in a very
private way in certain situations.

MS: Its a context in which people after the Revolution have come to
appreciate his films. Sometimes you have to arrive at a condition to
understand and appreciate certain things.

JR: I can realize now, looking at Where Is the Friends House? (1987) again,
that even though I was completely wrong to dismiss the film when I first saw
it, one way in which I might have had a point is that it seems to be the last of
conventionally-made features by Kiarostami, at least from a narrative
standpoint. What I mean is that the film has a narrative pay-off a moral, if
you will whereas the later films all leave out essential parts of the
narrative. So maybe part of my response was reacting again the
conventional aspect.
MS: Well, I think his other films all have pay-offs. What about Close-up? I
dont know how you can call it conventional or unconventional.

JR: Close-up begins unconventionally by starting off with the arrest of

Sabzian and then not even showing that in a conventional manner.

MS: But theres still a pay-off at the end. I know it doesnt have a
conventional beginning and middle, but by the end of the film, theres a
reconciliation between Makhmalbaf, the family and the impersonator.

JR: I agree. When I was talking about pay-off, I was thinking about films that
were just fictional. You could say that ABC Africa has a pay-off at the end too.

MS: What Im saying is that at the end of Close-up, its a conventional pay-
off its not a symbolic or metaphorical or elliptical pay-off or ending. And at
the end of Life and Nothing More (1992), he is a stranger who has been
passing through all these villages without any real interaction, and then he
decides to give a ride to this man, who is carrying a very heavy canister.

JR: Can you really tell thats whats happening?

MS: Yes, in the long shot you can see it. Because the first time, he passes by
him, and the second time he picks him up.

JR: Okay, Ill take your word for it. But the point Im trying to make is that the
first thing the film sets up is the expectation that hell find out whether the
kids hes looking for are alive or dead, but this never comes to pass. In other
words, theres a displacement of pay-off.

MS: Yes, its true. But, you know, theres always a resolution at the end of his
films, a pay-off regarding his characters struggles. In Taste of Cherry, for
example, in order to create you have to go through hell. Yes, in order to bring
birth to something you have to die first. You can call it anything you like, but
it makes sense. Also, at the end of Through the Olive Trees (1994), its only
through that type of filmmaking and repetition and all that, that at the end
the director notices Hossein is following Tahereh, he follows Hossein following
the woman, and that becomes the natural ending for the film. The realization
of this older man is his own attraction to the younger man, when he sees
how far he goes after her. So in effect Hossein visualizes something for him
to see. In the beginning he cant get it in his film. But he finally gets it off-
screen, when the camera is no longer shooting.

JR: So youre saying that the last shot is a point-of-view shot?

MS: Yes, it is a point-of-view shot. Maybe not literally, but in effect, yes, it is.
Just as one can talk about a kind of point-of-view shot at the end of The Wind
Will Carry Us.

JR: But not in Life and Nothing More

MS: No, there isnt one there. We look at him going up the hill in long shot.
But when he throws the bone into the water at the end of The Wind Will
Carry Us, it is some kind of shift.

JR: But you cant call it a point-of-view shot unless Bezhad is running
alongside the bone as it floats downstream.

MS: No. But what is not possible in real life becomes possible in film. The
same thing applies to Through the Olive Trees and Taste of Cherry, too,
where the hero has no control over his life and his environment, but then
everything changes once its seen as a film and hes seen as an actor. Also
in The Wind Will Carry Us, where death doesnt happen in the film that he
wants to shoot, but it happens just the same. And in Through the Olive Trees,
what finally happens is what the director wanted to put in his film but
couldnt.

JR: So, in other words, he sees something that stands for what he is missing
in the film he is shooting. But I think we are in agreement if I say that the
conventional pay-off is displaced here, whereas the end in Where is the
Friends House? is conventional.

MS: But when the boy is doing his homework near the end of the film, the
audience doesnt know what hes actually doing. So what happens in the
final scene isnt really a pay-off.

JR: For me, the pay-off is the irony of the teachers remark: Good boy.
Because he thinks the boy has done his homework and we know that he
hasnt. And the flower in a way takes the place of that homework and
furnishes another pay-off. It stands for a lot of things for a gift that his
friend has given to him, but also the gift of the old man who makes doors. He
gives it to the hero and says, Put this in your notebook. So the pay-off is a
false recognition and a true recognition in other words, a moral.

MS: But its important that at the end of the film, theres no shot of the other
boy, Nematzadeh, appreciating it or reacting in any other way.

JR: I guess what Im saying is that Where is the Friends House? becomes the
last pedagogical film that Kiarostami made for Kanun, because each of the
Kanun films is teaching you a lesson of some kind (1). And in this case what
youre saying, and I agree, is that the lesson is not for the teacher but for us.
But theres still a lesson there at the end.

MS: Yes, though it isnt the obvious one. As I mentioned to you earlier, in the
original story that the film is based on, its the teacher who notices what
happens, and he breaks into tears. The story, in fact, is called The Day the
Teacher Cried. Probably he sees something he doesnt have. In this version,
the only thing thats important is for the teacher not to punish the boy and
the other boy doesnt acknowledge that. Kiarostami shifts the emphasis onto
the beloved rather than on the one who loves.

JR: I think whats interesting isnt that Kiarostami is eliminating the story in
his later films. Its the reverse of that. Hes basically showing that there is
more story that you ever realized

MS: or that you expected.

JR: Yes, its the story behind the story which is hidden and which he is trying
to make evident. There are always more stories than you think there are, and
the purpose of most conventional stories is to push these other stories out of
the picture. Kiarostami is trying to bring them back.

MS: In all of his later films after Where is the Friends House?, the scene
before last becomes extremely important.

JR: Yes. In The Wind Will Carry Us, this is the scene in which Behzad takes the
photos of those women.

MS: Its the scene before last that suggests a loss. In Where is the Friends
House?, its the dark scene where he looks at the outside and at his mother
in the wind. That could suggest fear of death, the unknown, night, or that his
friend may be punished if he doesnt do anything. It opens up a whole set of
mysteries and then shows you how trite it is to wrap up the story with one
shot.

JR: Yes, its so interesting. And theres a classical element in this scene, in
the sense that the first time you see the boy with his mother is in the
courtyard, when shes doing the wash. And she asks him to do all those
things, too. Whats interesting is, the only time in the whole film that she
shows any kindness towards him is at night, just before the end of the film,
when shes serving him dinner. For once, she isnt questioning him, either;
she just assumes hes doing his own homework and not his friends. But the
fact that the door suddenly blows open reminds us of that early scene and all
the cruelty that she was showing toward him, and the other kinds of work he
was asked to do.

MS: Yes, that scene opens a whole can of worms. (Laughs.) In fact, every
time I see it, I have a different interpretation of it.

JR: Its formally quite brilliant, because the whole film clicks into place with
that scene.

MS: Yes, without it, it would have been a very conventional film. But then
that door opens to darkness.

JR: Its interesting to note that all the misunderstandings that grew out of the
English subtitled version calling the film Where is My Friends
House? rather than Where is the Friends House? isnt just a matter of
overlooking the fact that its named after a refrain in a poem. (2) Its also a
matter of it being a philosophical question in the poem, not just a practical
question. When I first saw the film, I missed the philosophical aspect. And the
philosophical dimension is ultimately the same as the poetic dimension.
Which is the most elusive part and the part that hes after.

II
JR: Have you seen David Lynchs The Straight Story (1999)?

MS: Yes. Why?

JR: Theres an American writer, Howard Hampton, who wrote an article in the
January 2000 issue of Artforum called Lynch Mob raising a ruckus
because critics such as J. Hoberman, Kent Jones, and myself were too
respectful of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Kiarostami and not respectful enough
of The Straight Story:

In its regard for ordinary people and the ways it finds to honor the mysteries
of everyday life along with the films diffuse sense of time and its synthesis
of almost pure visual abstraction and unadorned emotional intimacy The
Straight Story has obvious affinities with Iranian cinemas meld of realism
and fable. But although the film was by and large enthusiastically if not
perceptively received by mainstream reviewers, the serious critics who have
championed like-minded foreign films were less generous, even
condescending or outright dismissive Even a largely sympathetic reviewer
like the Chicago Readers Jonathan Rosenbaum called the movie
propaganda, as if Lynchs taking money from Disney were inherently more
compromising than Abbas Kiarostamis working under the aegis of a
totalitarian theocracy.

Theres plenty to object to here such as associating Iranian cinema with a

diffuse sense of time rather than the reverse of that.

MS: Maybe the reason why he thought that there was an affinity
between The Straight Story and a group of Iranian films in which I would
not include Kiarostamis is that there isnt a conventional dramatic
structure. Its a simple plot. And there are some other similarities as well: the
didactic moral values which include family values of this outdated hero,
the dysfunctional women characters (all of whom help to point up his
patriarchal wisdom), the backward (third world) technology represented by
the vehicle that he drives, and the emphasis on landscape as a basis for
spirituality.

JR: In other words, the eternal verities.

MS: But his linking of the supposed mysteries of everyday life in The Straight
Story with those in Kiarostami seems false to me. Whats so mysterious
about the old man or the stereotypical people he encounters? He seems to
be typecasting mid-western American farmers and Iranian peasants alike.

JR: His main argument should be examined more completely. He goes on to

argue that

The Straight Storys headstrong old gentleman and the relentlessly single-
minded protagonists of Kiarostamis films, or the equally determined little girl
of Jafar Panahis 1995, Kiarostami-scripted White Balloon (not to mention the
up-right, fiercely independent senior citizen Umberto D. of an earlier, no less
allegorical branch of Neorealism), have an innate kinship they are gnarled
branches of the same cinematic family tree. Yet there is a widespread view
among the film intelligentsia that humanity is the specialized province of the
salt of the foreign earth, where indigenous cultures are typically mediated
through familiar Eurocentric tropes and gestures (depoliticized avant-
Godardisms, Bresson-oil rubdowns, the many moods of Antonioni). For these
rigidly positioned film missionaries, places like Iowa are what they fly over on
their pilgrimages to Lourdes-like film festivals where true believers seek
healing epiphanies, artistic miracles, the blessings of directorial saints.

As offended as I was by Hamptons imputation of religious and Eurocentric

motives to American defenses of Kiarostami and Hou Hsiao-hsien as well as
his facile swipe at Kiarostamis implied politics, and his suggestion that some
sort of we are the world humanism linking together Umberto D., Taste of
Cherry, and The Straight Story is what actually makes all three films valuable
I have to concede now, as I wasnt willing to at the time, that he had a
limited point in tracing a certain amount of anti-Americanism or what Id
call a reaction against the arrogance of the American Empire through our
defenses of filmmakers like Kiarostami and Hou neither of whom was
incidentally receiving a hundredth as much attention as Lynch in the
mainstream press.

MS: Do you think this is a cover-up for something else?

JR: Well, I wrote an angry letter to Artforum when that was published in
which I accused Hampton of xenophobia, cold war thinking, and indignant
flag-waving basically us versus them thinking and added, What Id
like to know is where he sees propaganda for theocracy or totalitarianism in
Kiarostamis work. (3) And what does he mean, working under the aegis of,
especially when Lynch has to submit his work to test-marketing experts and
Kiarostami doesnt?

Hampton replied that his piece suggested that film critics no less than
filmmakers need to be in some kind of empathetic touch with the everyday
life and culture of their own land if thats indignant flag-waving, then I
think Jean Renoir, Youssef Chahine, and the Ray boys (Nick and Satyajit) are
equally xenophobic. I take it that what he meant by this assuming that
he was thinking and not indulging in more indignant flag-waving was a kind
of good or benign tribalism. My knee-jerk reaction to this considering all
that tribalism has meant and done over the past century and continues to
do, and bearing in mind that I grew up in a small town in Alabama is to
regard such a notion as an oxymoron. (Thats why Im suspicious of a film
like Gabbeh [Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996] in contrast to much better
Makhmalbaf films like Marriage of the Blessed (1989) or more provocative
ones like Salaam Cinema(1995), which Id like to read as a polemical
response to Through the Olive Trees.) But Im probably being short-sighted
about this. There must be cases of good tribalism that dont yield
intolerance, even if I cant think of any.

MS: I think theres a very interesting distinction here. When I teach Iranian
cinema and show in particular films by Kiarostami, students have a less
defensive attitude; theyre a little bit more open, and they relate to those
topics better. Now I hate to make generalizations, but I think that some of
the older generation have become more conservative. They have a certain
contempt for the rest of the world, or for what they call the Third World. I
dont know how many times Ive been regarded as a member of the Third
World, and automatically thats an insult, I assure you. It also has something
to do with the economic and political relationship of ones own country to the
country a film is coming from. For example, the relationship between Japan
and the United States is very different from that between Iran and the United
States.

JR: Well, as you know, when I recently wrote about The Circle for the Chicago
Reader, I made a particular argument that my editor took out. I said the
moment Coke machines are installed in Tehran, U.S. customs will stop
fingerprinting and taking mug shots of every Iranian who comes here a
practice which, I should note, is not followed in Iranian customs when
Americans enter that country. I call this cold war thinking too, because its so
paranoid.

MS: Its a very curious kind of threat when it comes to film. Because once
you look at it from the other point of view, American film has monopolized
the market in the rest of the world. So if those people in those countries are
paranoid about Americans, theres at least some basis. (Laughs.)

JR: Yes, and sometimes the monopoly even turns out to be inadvertent. As
you know, the most widely seen films in Iran are pirated dubs of brand new
American movies on video that arent even subtitled! Every film buff I spoke
to seems to have her or his own dealer a bit like the drug dealer who says,
Ive got just the thing for you

In any case, if good tribalism is what Hampton had in mind by his list of
empathetic filmmakers, his choice of examples couldnt be further off the
mark. Renoir left France for Italy and then the U.S. during the war (and later
made a film in India, The River [1951]), eventually settling permanently in
L.A. and some French critics never forgave him for this act of desertion.
Chahine emigrated to the U.S. as a teenager himself, and his films are full of
American (and French) references. Nick Ray made films about Romany and
Inuit people (Hot Blood [1956] and The Savage Innocents [1960]) and ended
his commercial filmmaking career in Europe, and even Satyajit Ray had the
brash idea of making at least one picture, The Chess Players [1977], in Hindi
and English rather than in Bengali. Similarly, Kiarostami has now also broken
Hamptons golden rule by making a documentary in Uganda thats
principally in English, rather than sticking to his own tribe and remaining in
some kind of empathetic touch with the everyday life and culture of his own
land a land Hampton has already defined as a totalitarian theocracy.

My point is that Americans have no right to view Kiarostami principally as an

Iranian artist if we dont know what being Iranian as opposed to, say,
Islamic (assuming that we know that either) really consists of. And is
Hampton really sure he knows all the ramifications of what Lynch being an
American means, especially for people outside the U.S.? Or is he interested
in Americans speaking only for themselves and to themselves, as they are
sometimes wont to do?

MS: But is Hampton very far away from Roger Ebert? Its an important part
of American culture to be so Eurocentric, and thats reflected in American
film criticism. Theres also the bigger issue of the art film in general. Think
how seriously some Americans take Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) a
completely empty, superficial film as opposed to The Circle, which was
running at the same time. Its just part of a general problem that people
have trouble with films that arent sentimental or obvious. Look at the films
that are so popular here, even among the Iranian ones.

JR: Isnt part of that a resistance to political films?

MS: Yes, and not only ones from Iran. I dont know who said it, but its been
argued that the people who appreciate art the best are the censors. They
know whats good and they censor it! (Laughs.)

JR: What about Hamptons charge that I was automatically placing

Kiarostami on some loftier plain because I was describing The Straight
Story as propaganda, but not Taste of Cherry?

MS: Even some Iranians share that point of view. Do you know how many
people have attacked me for helping the Chicago Film Center bring films
from Iran? Those Iranians who think that theyre dissidents say that any film
from Iran is propaganda. I say, if you think like that, you shouldnt show any
film from any country in the world, including the U.S. You have to look at a
particular film to see what it has to say in order to decide whether its
propaganda or not.

JR: Yes. You could also say by the same logic that the few American films that
have been allowed commercial runs in Iran in recent years such
as Seven, Dances with Wolves, and The Godfather must also be
propaganda on behalf of the Islamic government. (Laughs.) I mean, why
those films? It all looks pretty suspicious.

MS: I think there is a problem outside the U.S. Because of the way its
monopolized the market in cinema, weapons, and other products, some
people do have this anti-American bias. But that doesnt stop the ordinary
audience from appreciating a good American film theyll go and see it and
wont take it as propaganda. And if certain people in the government call it
propaganda, thats a very narrow-minded type of judgment that I think is
very dangerous. It becomes a mask for hatred and fear You know,
when Taste of Cherry received the main prize in Cannes, the way Roger Ebert
talked about the film made it seem like it was just a political prize. He was
very disappointed.

JR: Yes, he was so disaffected that he hasnt seen any other Kiarostami film
since then or at least he hasnt reviewed any. He basically wrote that he
thought the film was a fraud: the emperor has no clothes.

MS: And he isnt the only one; there are Iranians who think that. So its not a
question of the films nationality. Its the character of the film that does
something to you. First of all, I think its a question of class. Then its a
question of life experience and maturity. Most of the films that Roger Ebert
likes are pretty sentimental. Theyre paternalistic. Im not crazy about the
films they tend to like from India, Iran or wherever. Theyre most often
tearjerkers about pitiful little boys and poor helpless women.

JR: Let me play devils advocate. Youve argued very persuasively in your
essay that many of Kiarostamis films are about the exploitation and abuse of
children. Couldnt Roger reply to you that this is what some of Majid Majidis
films are also about?

MS: I think Majidis films are more accessible; you can cry while watching
them. But in a film like The Traveler (1974), the way Kiarostami shows you
the child, he doesnt encourage you to cry. Its much deeper than that.

JR: Would you call his films intellectual? Because some of what were
encountering against Kiarostami is anti-intellectualism.

MS: There are very strong intellectual layers in his films, but I cannot call
him an intellectual not in the way that term is generally understood.

JR: Thats a good distinction. But some people who dont like his films very
much tend to regard them as intellectual just the same. The same thing
happened to Jacques Tati who was even less of an intellectual than
Kiarostami is. At least Kiarostami is capable of quoting E.M. Cioran, for
instance.

But I better watch out and not turn Eurocentric. Though Hampton is far from
being the only American critic who insists on reading Eastern or Middle
Eastern filmmakers through European filters (which include Christianity and
Catholicism, both prominent reference points in his attack). In fact, my
original review of Taste of Cherry in the Chicago Reader was designed to get
beyond such stereotypes; I began by comparing Kiarostami to Tati, Bresson,
Godard, and Antonioni only to conclude later that these references might be
essential to me as routes into his work, and maybe even as security
blankets but that didnt mean they were necessarily essential to him.
Unfortunately, in one article Godfrey Cheshire quoted the first part of my
argument without ever bringing up the second part.
MS: What do they mean when they call someone an intellectual? It depends
on whats hidden behind the term. Sometimes they want to call Kiarostami
an intellectual so they can dismiss him.

JR: Thats a peculiarly American notion that youre out of touch with
ordinary experience if you think. And whats so weird in this country is that
its unconsciously connected to a class position.

MS: Those things arent just American. Theyre Iranian too.

JR: I guess Im being American in the worst sense that is, automatically
assuming that some local traits are unique. But I see what you mean: short-
sightedness is actually universal. This reminds me of the question that so
many people in Tehran asked me: is it true that Americans like Iranian art
movies because they show so many poor people, which is the way most
Americans want to see Iran? My usual response was, Maybe there are too
many poor people in Iranian art films. But there are also too many rich
people in the American commercial movies you watch on video, and if you
think youre getting an accurate picture of American life that way, youre just
as mistaken as we are.

MS: But Americans dont really care, because theyre in the position of
power, so it doesnt matter if their self-image is mutilated. But the rest of the
world cant afford that do you know what Im saying? In the same way, the
head of a company can wear sandals and a T-shirt to work, but not his
employees.

Now, to bring Kiarostami to the same level as some American independent

filmmakers although they are not all that independent such as David
Lynch is an insult, its a cultural attack. How dare you bring in somebody like
that! Its interesting that in Europe you wont find such megalomania. They
can accept you, fine. But here

JR: Yes. Though to be precise, Hampton isnt dismissing Kiarostami because

hes an intellectual, as we might have implied earlier. I think what hes
suggesting is that, on the contrary, he can be acceptableif he becomes
American. Not European, the way he thinks critics like Hoberman, Jones, and
I regard him, and certainly not Iranian, but American. All he has to do is fess
up and agree that hes the blood brother of David Lynch.

Maybe Hampton thinks Im being snobbish because I dont consider Taste of

Cherry and The Straight Story like-minded films. For me, imposing such a
connection eliminates almost everything I like in both films while making
them seem sappier than they actually are.

MS: I want to speak about something thats very difficult for Iranians in this
country. Look at the situation of Kiarostami: some people in Iran tell him he
just makes films for foreigners. And some foreigners say he should be
appreciated mainly in his own country. They push him from both sides,
making him homeless. Or look at the case of Saless. (4) He left Iran during
the Shahs time. He lived in Germany 25 years and made 14 films there. But
when he died, all the German publications called him an Iranian filmmaker.

Okay. Then, when I spoke to Simon Field three years ago about showing a
retrospective of his films at the Rotterdam film festival, he said, But hes not
Iranian he made most of his films in Germany. So he cant be appreciated
as part of any national cinema. What does that say about us?

I need to make a distinction. A lot of immigrants to this country came from

Europe. Theres a very strong affinity with European culture, and in fact its
very Eurocentric here. Its not much of a difficulty for a European to come
here and establish himself or herself as an artist. But a person from the
Middle East? God forbid! An Iranian who wants to come here?

JR: Its obviously much harder. But even for Europeans, theres an enormous
pressure to give up ones background.

MS: For Middle Easterners in the West, their cliched image always precedes
them. Do you know that I just received an offer to direct a commercial for
Dutch TV? They said they wanted it in Iranian film style! And look at what
people are called: African-Americans, Mexican-Americans. Yet those who
come from Europe meaning white people arent hyphenated. If Kiarostami
were European, Hampton would probably have a different attitude towards
him Why does a critic who considers himself an intellectual feel he has to
defend only his national culture? I think its a very dangerous position.

In my classes, Ive sometimes said, Okay, close your eyes. When I say Iran,
whats the first thing that comes into your head? Is it a language you dont
understand? Looks? Clothes? Landscape? And if we rule these things out,
whats left? Big cities in the so-called Third World are polluted, just as theyre
polluted here. Nature and human emotions are the same. Human ambitions
are universal. It all boils down to attitudes and politics that condition us to
see others as being separate from ourselves.

During Operation Desert Storm, when these little maps of the Middle East
were everywhere even around public swimming pools, with arrows
indicating where we were fighting my students would ask me, How is your
family now? Id say, Im not from Iraq, and theyd say, Sorry even
though 99% of them thought that Iraq should be bombed back to the Stone
Age. But this country, apart from its own Civil War, has never been through
the social disaster of a war on its own soil and what this means on a daily
basis. Thats why war for them remains an abstraction. You know, when
students cant pronounce my name, I remind them that they can learn and
 pronounce Arnold Schwarzeneggars name so they should be able to learn
mine.

Abbas Kiarostami Filmography

1961-69 Making Film Credit-Titles and Commercials

1970 Bread and Alley (short)

1972 Recess (short)
1973 Experience (medium length)
1974 The Traveler (feature)
1975 Two Solutions for One Problem (short)
1975 So Can I (short)
1976 The Wedding Suit (medium-length)
1976 The Colors
1977 Tribute to the Teachers (short) (apparently a lost film now)
1977 Report (feature)
1978 Solution (short)
1978 Jahan Nama Palace (commissioned short)
1979 Case No.1, Case No. 2 (medium length)
1980 Toothache (short) also known as Dental Hygiene
1981 Regularly or Irregularly (short)
1982 The Chorus (short)
1983 Fellow Citizen (medium length)
1984 A 13-Part TV Program on Fear and Suspicion (apparently this is also
lost)
1985 The First Graders (feature)
1987 Where is the Friends House? (feature)
1989 Homework (feature)
1990 Close-up (feature)
1992 Life and Nothing More (feature) also known as And Life Goes On
1994 Through the Olive Trees (feature)
1995 Lumiere & Co. (a 52-second segment)
1997 Taste of Cherry (feature)
1997 Birth of Light (short)
1999 The Wind Will Carry Us (feature)
2001 ABC Africa (feature)

Endnotes

1. Also known as the Center for the Intellectual Development of Children

and Young Adults an organization founded by the Shahs wife. When
Kiarostami was making advertising films in his late 20s, Firuz Shirvanlu, the
owner of an advertising agency he worked for and a good friend, who was
also the director of Kanun, invited him to collaborate in setting up the
Centers film unit in 1969. Kiarostamis first film of his own, Bread and
Alley (1970), was made there the following year, and most of his subsequent
 films from Life and Nothing More (1992) onwards were made for Kanun.
(JR)

2. Sohrab Sepehrys famous poem Address begins

In the false-dawn twilight

the rider asked,
Where is the House of the Friend?
a question that also concludes the poem. (It should also be noted that
Kiarostamis film is dedicated to the memory of Sepehry, born in 1928.)
Translated by David L. Martin, in The Expanse of Green: Poems of Sohrab
Sepehry, Los Angeles: Kalimet Press/UNESCO, 1988, pp. 45-46. (JR)

3. Jonathan Rosenbaum and Kent Jones reply to Hampton, and

Hamptons response to both, appeared in ArtforumMarch 2000.

4. Sohrab Shahid Saless (1944-1998) studied film in Vienna and Paris

during the 60s before making A Simple Event, Still Life, and 22 short
documentaries in Iran during the early 70s. His 14 remaining films were
made in Germany; he emigrated to Los Angeles in 1995, hoping to make a
film there, and died three years later in Chicago. See Sohrab Shahid Saless:
A Cinema of Exile by Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, in Life and Art: The New Iranian
Cinema, edited by Rose Issa and Sheila Whitaker, London: National Film
Theatre, 1999, pp. 135-144. (JR)