Saturday, February 16, 2013

"10 ON 10" by Abbas Kiarostami

Kiarostami talks about his film, "Ten," digital filmmaking, film music, script, actors, camera and so on from his experience of making films while he is driving at the location of his film, "Taste of Cherry."


Very informative, philosophical, quoting Nietzsche, Rumi, a Scandinavian film with French subtitle he saw twice without understanding the language but came to create his own understanding of protagonists' relationship, an advice from his film industry friend telling him to adopt Hollywood filmmaking. His friend said Kiarostami's filmmaking is like planting vegetable in flower pots instead of planting on the ground. Kiarostami warns the Hollywood films are more threat to the world than the American Military. These Hollywood films are all about special effects, camera movement, super star actors, technical advancement of filmmaking and nothing about life.

As Kiarostami advice to young people of they want to become successful, they should not ignore Hollywood. Then, he goes out of the car with a camera rolling to shoot the landscape while he take a leak out of the frame. He comes back to the car, takes the camera and points to a Ceder tree. He says he is much more interested in making films about something of everyday, something of unheard moments of ordinary and zooms onto the ground where ants are bringing a grain of rice into a hole. There, such an insignificant but powerful life there is.