RIP Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016)
Tuesday, July 5, 2016 at 9:00AM The world just lost another master artist yesterday, after the recent passing of Michael Cimino and Elie Wiesel. Abbas Kiarostami has passed away after a battle with gastrointestinal cancer.
Kiarostami's blended fiction and non-fiction during his over forty year career in film. One of the most prominent Iranian filmmakers, he had been a mainstay of the Cannes Film Festival, jurying multiple times and winning the Palme d'Or in 1997 for Taste of Cherry. His most recent films Certified Copy and Like Someone in Love ventured out of Iran, but it's his homegrown meditations on death like Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us are what instantly come to mind on this sad news.
Kiarostami wasn't just a film artist but a poet as well, though poetic language heightened much of his film work. His films were soulfully awake and fiercely personal - Cherry being the brusing and enlightening standout, with Copy's existentialism winning him his newest fans. Just last week, he had been included on the Academy's list of newly invited members. You can catch up with many of his films on Hulu.
What was your favorite Kiarostami film?
Reader Comments (11)
A very gifted man. This year just is relentless with the lost of artists from all the various fields, I just saw that TV's original Lois Lane, Noel Neill passed away this weekend as well.
So sad. Certified Copy is a perfect thing, so easy to get wrapped up in it, so rewarding to puzzle out.
He's someone I've been wanting to dive deeper into, and, fortunately, he's left us with a first-rate body of work to explore.
Sad to hear about Kiarostami's passing. Wasn't he just invited to be an Academy member? I didn't know that Cimino had passed away as well. I was always hoping he would have a Malick-type revival and make one last great film, but it seemed he no longer had the desire for filmmaking.
His masterpiece is Close-Up but all his movies are brilliant....
Great loss
No mention of Michael Cimino's passing this weekend? Oscar winning director of The Deer Hunter, one of the great films of the 1970s!
Cannot describe how sad I was to read of his passing. One of the all-time great artists of any medium and he still had so many masterworks left in him.
Certified Copy is my favourite of his films, and one of my favourites in general. Ten is possibly my favourite of his Iranian works, though Through the Olive Trees has eluded me for a decade now. I will seek it out anew. There is some consolation in knowing I have at least one more Kiarostami to discover. But then again, I'm sure that the likes of Certified Copy and Taste of Cherry and Close Up and Ten will be a new discovery upon each repeated viewing.
Very sad news. I was just beginning to get to know his work, but Certified Copy is a masterpiece.
Life and Nothing More is my favorite, but his whole Koker trilogy is perfect. I think no other director since Bergman or Antonioni had a comparable run of masterpieces like The Koker Trilogy - Close-up - Taste of Cherry - The Wind Will Carry Us.
Well, the question of who is the greatest living filmmake just got a little easier. And to think he just got invited to join the Academy! Through the Olive Trees is my favorite, not only because of its perfection, but also because it was the first Iranian film I had ever seen. And to think I only went to see it out of a sense of duty, expecting some "worthy" little film that was patronizingly being praised because it came from an unexpected place. Was I ever wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong!
I've only seen 5 of his films and a segment from an anthology film yet they're all extraordinary yet Close-Up is his masterpiece.
Devastating news - there was nobody like Kiarostami. He has several masterpieces to his name, but Close-Up is truly exceptional and I urge anybody who's never seen it to seek it out as soon as possible - it is one of those rare pieces of art that changes the way you look - layers and layers of meta-pleasure wrapped in such apparent simplicity - a transcendent, poetic sleight-of-hand and a deeply humane portrait of the obsessive cinephile in all of us.