October 12 - October 27 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Abbas Kiarostami

Comprising nineteen features and shorts, Life and So Much More presents a rare opportunity to see Abbas Kiarostami's masterpieces from the 1990s in the context of earlier and more recent experimental films. A uniquely resourceful filmmaker, he sets his skeletal narratives in dusty Iranian villages and vast fields, in one-room schoolhouses and the traffic-clogged streets of Tehran. He films with available light and casts locals as characters. Kiarostami performs a kind of cinematic alchemy: out of the basic documentary elements of his homeland he constructs films that are formally inventive and often exquisitely beautiful. The simplest of everyday situations become metaphysical inquiries into the universal nature of art, life and death. His deep understanding of the world of childhood and his frequent use of children as protagonists draws the viewer deeper into the existential debate that is the real subject of his work.

Jytte Jensen, curator of film at MoMA, who organized the retrospective in New York, describes Kiarostami as a "forward-thinking, innovative spirit that has placed his work at the vanguard of filmmaking—all the while carving a place for Iranian cinema in modern film history. Kiarostami's oeuvre is distinguished as much by its ethical and philosophical core as by its aesthetic purity and focus on the humanity of ordinary people. His cinema is one of questions and questioning."

Presented in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and the Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, this series was made possible by the kind cooperation of the Iranian Art Foundation, NY; Kanoon, Tehran; the Fahrabi Institute, Tehran; Zeitgeist Films; New Yorker Films; Miramax Films; and MK2. Special thanks to Jytte Jensen. Kathy Geritz, and Maryam Horri.

LACMA
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles CA 90036
tel 323 857-6000
tel 323-857-0098 (TDD)
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