THE GUARDIAN INTERVIEW WITH ABBAS KIAROSTAMI HOSTED BY GEOFF ANDREW
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KIAROSTAMI'S CLOSE-UP

Venue:

NFT1, National Film Theatre, South Bank, Waterloo, London SE1 8XT.

Date and time:

28 April, 2005 - 18.15 (film),.20.20 (interview).

Organised by:

The National Film Theatre in collaboration with the Iran Heritage Foundation and the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute.

Introduction:

To launch its comprehensive retrospective of Kiarostami's films, the NFT is delighted to welcome him back for a second on-stage interview. He first visited the NFT during a survey of Iranian cinema in 1999, when he spoke about his filmmaking career up to and including the then recently released The Taste of Cherry. Now, six years on and with six more films to discuss, he will again be interviewed by NFT programmer Geoff Andrew, who is the curator of the Kiarostami film season at the NFT and the author of a new book on 10.

Since Kiarostami's first visit (shortly after which several millennial polls voted him the world's most important filmmaker of the 1990s), he has, of course, made a considerable splash with his audacious and experimental work in the field of digital cinema, which will naturally be one of the topics of discussion during the Guardian interview. But the conversation - which will follow a screening of Close-Up - will also cover Kiarostami's career overall: the years before he was a filmmaker; the early films he made for the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanoon); the relationship between documentary and fiction in Kiarostami's work; the often unusual methods he uses during the filmmaking process; his relationship to the Iranian film scene; his current status as an 'international' filmmaker; and the way his films relate to his work in other fields of artistic endeavour, including poetry and photography. In short, the discussion will range far and wide, touching on all Kiarostami's work from the very first short (Bread and Alley) right up to Five and Tickets, both of which will be receiving their British premieres at the NFT as part of the retrospective. The interview will also include, towards the end of the evening, an opportunity for members of the audience to put their own questions to the artist.

The Interview will follow a screening of Kiarostami's Close-up.

Ticket prices:

11.75 GBP , concs 9.75 GBP (interview only)
14.50 GBP , concs 11.50 GBP (joint tickets for interview and of screening of Close-up).

Box office:

44 20 79283232, Minicom 44 20 76202025, Online www.bfi.org.uk/nft.

Kiarostami festival:

This programme is part of a London-wide programme of events entitled Abbas Kiarostami: Visions of the Artist celebrating the achievements of this artist and his impact on contemporary culture and society.