Edward Wright Creates a List of His 1,000 Favorite Movies: Watch 10 of Them Free Online

in Film | August 1st, 2016

There was a time when draw­ing up a list of your top ten favorite films of all time would suf­fice to estab­lish your­self as a cinephile. But sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of ever more obses­sive film-lovers have upped the ante — as, even more influ­en­tial­ly, have the film­mak­er-cinephiles. Quentin Taran­ti­no (on whose favorite movies we have post­ed many a time) may still stand as that tribe’s liv­ing arche­type, but his suc­ces­sors have made no secrets of the cin­e­ma they admire. Take, for instance, Edgar Wright, direc­tor of such intel­li­gent come­dies as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End, and author (with MUBI’s Sam DiS­alle) of a list of his top thou­sand favorite films of all time.

“Arranged in chrono­log­i­cal order, Wright’s list kicks off with Robert Wiene’s 1920 clas­sic The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari and con­cludes with Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s con­tro­ver­sial hor­ror flick The Neon Demon, which opened this year,” writes Enter­tain­ment Week­ly’s Dec­van Cog­gan. “In between are 998 eclec­tic choic­es, includ­ing every­thing from Cit­i­zen Kane and The God­fa­ther to The Lob­ster and The LEGO Movie.” That may not come as much of a sur­prise to Wright’s fans, who appre­ci­ate the eclec­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty, both aes­thet­ic and comedic, that per­me­ates his films. Now they have a guide to fol­low, through its influ­ence on his thor­ough­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry work, into near­ly the entire his­to­ry of cin­e­ma.

In fact, they can start right now with no few­er than ten pic­tures from the ear­li­er part of his chrono­log­i­cal­ly-arranged list. Fol­low the links below to our posts on them here on Open Cul­ture, where you can watch them for free. The ones with an aster­isk you can watch right here on this page.

Hyper­ki­net­ic humor, snap­py dia­logue, unre­al­i­ty, dystopia, men­ace: all qual­i­ties just as present in these clas­sic movies as in Wright’s own. Once you’ve seen them, you’ll find your appre­ci­a­tion for his back cat­a­log has risen to a whole new lev­el — and they’ll no doubt place you well to have the fullest pos­si­ble view­ing expe­ri­ence of his lat­est pic­ture, a crime com­e­dy called Baby Dri­ver, when it hits the­aters next year.

via Enter­tain­ment Week­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Wes Anderson’s Favorite Films: Moon­struck, Rosemary’s Baby, and Luis Buñuel’s The Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel

Orson Welles Names His 10 Favorite Films: From Chaplin’s City Lights to Ford’s Stage­coach

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Painting the Earliest Form of Cinema?

in Film, History | July 26th, 2016

A few years ago, Wern­er Her­zog’s acclaimed Cave of For­got­ten Dreams pulled off an unlike­ly com­bi­na­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and sub­ject mat­ter, using the lat­est in 3D cin­e­ma to cap­ture the old­est known man­made images. But in the view of French archae­ol­o­gist and film­mak­er Marc Azé­ma, it must have made per­fect sense as a kind of clos­ing of a grand cul­tur­al loop. More than twen­ty years of research has made him see the kind of up to 32,000-year-old cave paint­ings shown in Her­zog’s film as sequen­tial images of man and beast, not just sta­t­ic ones — mov­ing pic­tures, if you like — that emerge when arranged in a cer­tain way.

Azé­ma’s short video “Sequen­tial Ani­ma­tion: The First Pale­olith­ic Ani­mat­ed Pic­tures” does that arrang­ing for us, reveal­ing how the ear­ly anatom­i­cal sketch­es found on the walls of caves in France and Por­tu­gal depict ani­mal move­ment as the human artists per­ceived it. The con­nec­tion to mod­ern cin­e­ma, if you go through Ead­weard Muy­bridge’s nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry stud­ies of motion and then on to the prod­ucts of the Lumière broth­ers’ ear­ly movie cam­era, looks clear indeed. Once we fig­ured out how to sat­is­fy our ages-long curios­i­ty about how things move, we then, human ambi­tion being what it is, had to find a way to turn the dis­cov­ery toward artis­tic ends again.

“I don’t think it’s too much to call it an ear­ly form of cin­e­ma,” says Azé­ma in the seg­ment from PRI’s The World embed­ded above. “It was the first grand form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, with an audi­ence and pic­tures.” He points to the key con­cept of reti­nal per­sis­tence, or per­sis­tence of vision, “when you’ve got an image, then a suc­ces­sive image, and anoth­er image, and the reti­na fol­lows what’s com­ing next,” which makes cin­e­ma pos­si­ble in the first place — and which ear­ly man, who “had the need to get the images out of his brain and on the wall,” seems to have known some­thing about. And what, we can hard­ly resist won­der­ing, will cin­e­ma look like to the future gen­er­a­tions who will regard even our biggest-bud­get 3D spec­ta­cles as, essen­tial­ly, pre­his­toric cave paint­ings?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Movie Cam­era in Four Min­utes: From the Lumiere Broth­ers to Google Glass

Watch the Films of the Lumière Broth­ers & the Birth of Cin­e­ma (1895)

We Were Wan­der­ers on a Pre­his­toric Earth: A Short Film Inspired by Joseph Con­rad

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Stanley Kubrick’s Daughter Vivian Debunks the Age-Old Moon Landing Conspiracy Theory

in Film, History | July 22nd, 2016

Kubrick Moon Landing

All moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists refuse to believe that the Unit­ed States land­ed on that much-mythol­o­gized rock 250,00 miles away in 1969. As to why the rest of us believe that it did hap­pen, moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists vary in the specifics of their sto­ries. Per­haps the most inter­est­ing ele­ment of the lore — inter­est­ing to cinephiles, at least — holds that Stan­ley Kubrick, fresh off the pro­duc­tion of 2001: A Space Odyssey, secret­ly shot the land­ing video seen across Amer­i­ca in a stu­dio, lat­er cash­ing in on the favor by bor­row­ing one of NASA’s cus­tom-made Zeiss lens­es to shoot 1975’s Bar­ry Lyn­don.

Kubrick died in 1999, and so can’t clear up the mat­ter him­self, unless you believe the “con­fes­sion” video that cir­cu­lat­ed last year, con­vinc­ing nobody but the already-con­vinced. But his daugh­ter Vivian took to Twit­ter just this month to put the mat­ter to rest her­self, embed­ding an impas­sioned defense of her father’s integri­ty (and an encour­age­ment to focus on the more plau­si­ble abus­es of pow­er quite pos­si­bly going on right this moment) that goes way beyond 140 char­ac­ters:

Kubrick Moon Landing Tweet

“Vivian Kubrick worked on the set of The Shin­ing with her father where she shot a behind-the-scenes mak­ing-of doc­u­men­tary about the film,” adds Vari­ety’s Lamar­co McClen­don. “The­o­rists have pur­port­ed [Stan­ley] even used the film to admit to shoot­ing the hoax by leav­ing behind clues. One such clue was Dan­ny Lloyd wear­ing an Apol­lo 11 sweater.” The Shin­ing has giv­en rise to a fair few the­o­ries, con­spir­a­cy and oth­er­wise, of its own, prov­ing that Kubrick fans can get obses­sive, watch­ing and re-watch­ing his work while seek­ing out sym­bols and pat­terns, see­ing con­nec­tions and draw­ing con­clu­sions by build­ing elab­o­rate inter­pre­tive struc­tures atop thin evi­dence. Come to think of it, you’d think they and the moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists would have a lot to talk about.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick Faked the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing in 1969, Or So the Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Goes

“Moon Hoax Not”: Short Film Explains Why It Was Impos­si­ble to Fake the Moon Land­ing

Michio Kaku & Noam Chom­sky School Moon Land­ing and 9/11 Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rists

Neil Arm­strong, Buzz Aldrin & Michael Collins Go Through Cus­toms and Sign Immi­gra­tion Form After the First Moon Land­ing (1969)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Aaron Sorkin, Creator of The West Wing & The Social Network, Teaches Screenwriting in an Online Class

in Film, Online Courses, Television, Writing | July 14th, 2016

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Sports Night, The West Wing, The Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent, The Social Net­work — hard­ly shame­ful items to appear on any­one’s résumé. Sure, peo­ple dis­agree about the likes of Stu­dio 60 on the Sun­set Strip and The News­room, but we’ve all got to admit that when Aaron Sorkin writes, he hits more than he miss­es, and even the sup­posed miss­es have more of inter­est about them than many oth­ers’ hits. How does this mas­ter of the mod­ern Amer­i­can scene — its con­cerns, its per­son­al­i­ties, its con­ver­sa­tions, its pol­i­tics — do it? You can find out in his Screen­writ­ing course on Mas­ter­Class, the new plat­form for online instruc­tion as giv­en by big-name doers of high-pro­file work.

Back in May, we fea­tured Mas­ter­Class’s offer­ing of Wern­er Her­zog on film­mak­ing, and though most every­one can enjoy hear­ing the man behind Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitz­car­ral­do, and Griz­zly Man talk for five hours, not every­one can sum­mon the will to make movies like those. Sorkin, by con­trast, uses his also con­sid­er­able cre­ative vital­i­ty to a dif­fer­ent end entire­ly, writ­ing snap­py scripts that bring his own com­pelling idio­syn­crasies to main­stream film and tele­vi­sion.

But he start­ed, accord­ing to Mas­ter­Class, by writ­ing his first screen­play on the hum­ble medi­um of cock­tail nap­kins — cock­tail nap­kins that became A Few Good Men. Since then, he’s come up with “rules of sto­ry­telling, dia­logue, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, and what makes a script actu­al­ly sell,” now ready to share with his online stu­dents.

In fact, he gives one away for free in the trail­er above: “No one in real life starts a sen­tence with, ‘Damn it.’ ” That alone may get you writ­ing your own Oscar-win­ning screen­play, thus sav­ing you the $90 fee for the whole five-hour course, but Sorkin goes on to tease his meth­ods for break­ing through his “con­stant state of writer’s block” to craft dia­logue as he con­ceives of that process: “Tak­ing some­thing some­one has just said, hold­ing them in your hand, and then punch­ing them in the face with it.” He also makes ref­er­ence to Aris­totle’s Poet­ics, mak­ing his own lec­tur­ing sound like the very same high-and-low, intel­lec­tu­al and vis­cer­al cock­tail that his fans so enjoy in the dia­logue he writes. “The worst crime you can com­mit,” he warns, “is telling the audi­ence some­thing they already know,” and it sounds as if, in teacher mode to his audi­ence of aspir­ing screen­writ­ers, he plans on fol­low­ing his own advice.

Note: You can get a year-long pass to all Mas­ter­class cours­es for $180. Or give any indi­vid­ual course as a gift.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Will Teach His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

10 Tips From Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Creativity of Female Graffiti & Street Artists Will Be Celebrated in Street Heroines, a New Documentary

in Art, Creativity, Film, Life | July 11th, 2016

Street art is a fre­quent­ly dan­ger­ous game. The threat of arrest pales in com­par­i­son to some of the haz­ards long time prac­ti­tion­ers describe. While oth­er artists sketch in pleas­ant cafes, cre­ators of large-scale street pieces often have no choice but to wrig­gle through ragged holes in chain link fences and climb to ver­tig­i­nous heights to get to their can­vas­es.

There’s a pop­u­lar con­cep­tion of graf­fi­ti artist as lone wolf, but when it comes to the per­ils of the street, there’s safe­ty in num­bers. You need a crew. Female street artists must draw on the pow­er of sis­ter­hood.

As pho­to­jour­nal­ist Martha Coop­er notes in the trail­er for direc­tor Alexan­dra Hen­ry’s Street Hero­ines, above:

I think bring­ing women togeth­er empow­ers them and there’s been some resis­tance on the part of men…it has to do with cama­raderie too. It’s not that they’re say­ing, “You can’t do it,” but they’re just not allow­ing them in to their inner group.

Appar­ent­ly, street art is some­thing of an old boy’s club.

“What!?” gasps Lady Pink, a well known vet­er­an with over 35 years’ expe­ri­ence. “You need a penis to climb a lad­der? Does it help you hold on?”

The female cama­raderie Coop­er cites extends to the suc­cess­ful fund­ing of a Kick­starter cam­paign to com­plete this doc­u­men­tary on “the courage and cre­ativ­i­ty of female graf­fi­ti & street artists from around the world.” As the dead­line loomed, Lexi Bel­la & Danielle Mas­tri­on, two of the women fea­tured in the doc­u­men­tary, issued an open invi­ta­tion to New York City-based female artists to join them in cre­at­ing a spur-of-the-moment mur­al in Brook­lyn, sur­ren­der­ing artis­tic con­trol to embrace com­mu­ni­ty spir­it.

street heroines2

Many of the 25 artists Hen­ry has pro­filed thus far speak of using their work to bring beau­ty to the street, and to advo­cate on behalf of the oppressed. Such earnest­ness may dimin­ish them even fur­ther in the eyes of the old school He Man Woman Haters Club. Lexi Bel­la coun­ter­bal­ances the laugh­ably soft image cer­tain macho prac­ti­tion­ers may assign to them by speak­ing unapolo­get­i­cal­ly of the thrill of mak­ing one’s work as big as pos­si­ble “so mil­lions of peo­ple can see it.”

Street Hero­ines is aim­ing for release in 2017.

via The Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

The Bat­tle for LA’s Murals

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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David Lynch Despises Product Placement & Watching Movies on iPhones (NSFW)

in Business, Film, Technology | July 11th, 2016

When one first encoun­ters the sur­re­al sen­si­bil­i­ties of David Lynch on film, it’s hard to know what to expect of the man behind them. Is he a tor­tured recluse, work­ing out his demons onscreen? A dement­ed auteur with issues? But Lynch’s explo­rations of the vio­lence and sadism lurk­ing beneath America’s shiny veneer come to us too leav­ened by absur­dist humor to be the prod­uct of a man who takes him­self too seri­ous­ly.

And when you first encounter Lynch—in inter­views or his own cameo role, say, on Twin Peaks—you find exact­ly that: he’s an affa­ble, seem­ing­ly well-adjust­ed-if-eccen­tric gen­tle­man from Mis­soula, Mon­tana who doesn’t at all seem beset by dark forces in the way that many of his mem­o­rable char­ac­ters have been over many decades of film­mak­ing. Lynch seems instead remark­ably free from anx­i­ety, as his work is free from the per­ni­cious influ­ences of a venal Hol­ly­wood stu­dio cul­ture he evis­cer­ates in Mul­hol­land Dri­ve.

Lynch would cred­it his psy­cho­log­i­cal and cre­ative good health to med­i­ta­tion, but there are oth­er rea­sons that his body of work feels so con­sis­tent­ly ele­vat­ed to the lev­el of purist high art: the film­mak­er him­self is a purist when it comes to film—perhaps one of the last few high-pro­file direc­tors to remain almost ful­ly inde­pen­dent of the dic­tates of com­mer­cial­ism. Wit­ness his atti­tude toward such crude, inva­sive com­pro­mis­es as prod­uct place­ment in the inter­view clip at the top of the post (Lynch’s ver­dict in a word: “bull­shit”).

Or, just above, see him opine on the phe­nom­e­non of the iPhone, or smart­phone equiv­a­lent, as media plat­form. “If you’re play­ing the movie on a tele­phone,” says Lynch, “you will nev­er in a mil­lion years expe­ri­ence the film. You may think you have expe­ri­enced it. But you’ll be cheat­ed…. Get real.” Like the inter­view clip at the top, the iPhone mini-rant—an extra from the Inland Empire DVD, Lynch’s last fea­ture film—shows us the direc­tor at his cranki­est, a side that of him that seems to emerge only when the sub­ject of artis­tic com­pro­mise for commerce’s sake aris­es.

But should we con­sid­er Lynch a Lud­dite, an oppo­nent of the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion in film­mak­ing? Far from it. Lynch shot Inland Empire on a small dig­i­tal cam­era, as you can hear him dis­cuss above in anoth­er clip from the film’s DVD. And if we were to assume that he hates Hol­ly­wood and the stu­dio sys­tem, we’d be wrong there as well. He goes on to explain what he loves about L.A.: the dream, the light, the smell, the feel of the “gold­en age of Hol­ly­wood,” the sound stages (“fac­to­ries for mak­ing cin­e­ma”), and even the star sys­tem. Keep watch­ing for more of Lynch’s idio­syn­crat­ic opinions—on his favorite actress Lau­ra Dern, on “mak­ing films for a par­tic­u­lar audi­ence,” and on a sub­ject very dear to him: “dreams influ­enc­ing thoughts.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

David Lynch Cre­ates a Very Sur­re­al Plug for Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion

9 New Episodes of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks to Air in 2016

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch “The Corridor,” a Tribute to the Music Video Stanley Kubrick Planned to Make Near the End of His Life

in Film, Music | July 7th, 2016

When Stan­ley Kubrick died, he left behind numer­ous film ideas that would nev­er see the light of day. There was his epic Napoleon film; an adap­ta­tion of a Jim Thomp­son nov­el; his long-talked about Holo­caust film Aryan Papers; and so much more.

But this was a new one to hear about: in 1996 Kubrick agreed to direct a music video for UNKLE’s upcom­ing Psyence Fic­tion album. You may recall, back when MTV played music videos, see­ing Jonathan Glazer’s “Rab­bit in Your Head­lights” video, or Jake Scott’s “Be There,” both from UNKLE’s album. Alas, Kubrick­’s video nev­er got made. He had start­ed film­ing Eyes Wide Shut and then passed away upon its release.

Now “The Cor­ri­dor,” a glimpse of which you can see above, is an attempt to bring Kubrick and UNKLE back togeth­er. It’s not what actu­al­ly might have been filmed by the direc­tor, but some­thing that cap­tures the project in spir­it. It’s also a lov­ing trib­ute to Kubrick’s career and his love of sin­gle-point per­spec­tive, which has been video essayed else­where.

Direc­tor Toby Dye, who has direct­ed videos like “Par­adise Cir­cus” for Mas­sive Attack and “Anoth­er Night Out” for UNKLE, took on the job of bring­ing “The Cor­ri­dor” to the screen, co-designed by Rid­ley Scott Asso­ciates, work­ing with Dye’s Black Dog Films.

“The Cor­ri­dor” uses the one song off Psyence Fic­tion that nev­er got a video, the Richard Ashcroft-sung “Lone­ly Souls,” as its back­drop. Dye has cre­at­ed four nar­ra­tives that play on Kubrick’s icon­ic films–The Shin­ing, A Clock­work Orange, Bar­ry Lyn­don,and 2001–but then inter­weaves time and char­ac­ter along a long cor­ri­dor track­ing shot, star­ring Joan­na Lum­ley and Aiden Gillen.

In addi­tion, “The Cor­ri­dor” is a video cen­ter­piece to what sounds like a very cool exhi­bi­tion. Curat­ed by Mo’Wax and UNKLE founder James Lavelle, “Day­dream­ing with Stan­ley Kubrick” opened yes­ter­day at Som­er­set House in Lon­don and runs through August 24, 2016. Along with the video, the exhi­bi­tion fea­tures art­works cel­e­brat­ing Kubrick’s influ­ence on gen­er­a­tions of artists. (The stack of heaters on top of the Over­look car­pet is great.)

Said Dye:

‘For me, the unblink­ing red eye of 2001 A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000 per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the cin­e­ma of Stan­ley Kubrick. For all his films share that same cool­ly ana­lyt­i­cal gaze, study­ing from afar mankind and all its many foibles. Kubrick’s cam­era nev­er appeared to fol­low the action, it was as if it moved of its own accord and the tableau of life sim­ply unfurled before it. It was his seem­ing­ly nev­er-end­ing cam­era zooms from Bar­ry Lyn­don that first sparked the seed of the idea behind “The Cor­ri­dor,” before that idea grew, and grew into some­thing that was, at times, infu­ri­at­ing­ly ambi­tious, but I hope in the best tra­di­tion of the man who inspired it.’

Those who can’t attend will have to wait and see if and when the full video for “The Cor­ri­dor” appears online. In the mean­time, Som­er­set House awaits.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

A Tour of Stan­ley Kubrick’s Prized Lens Col­lec­tion

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Lost Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick’s Unfin­ished Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Four Video Essays Explain the Mastery of Filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (RIP)

in Film | July 6th, 2016

With each film he made, the inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed Iran­ian film­mak­er Abbas Kiarosta­mi left crit­ics grasp­ing for superla­tives, and his death this past Mon­day has chal­lenged them to find ways to ful­ly describe the dis­tinc­tive nature of his cin­e­mat­ic mas­tery. In his New York­er obit­u­ary for Kiarosta­mi, Richard Brody calls him “sim­ply one of the most orig­i­nal and influ­en­tial direc­tors in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma,” as well as “the first Iran­ian film­mak­er who expand­ed the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma not mere­ly in a soci­o­log­i­cal sense but in an artis­tic one,” whose “tena­cious, bold, rest­less orig­i­nal­i­ty” brought the world to Iran­ian cin­e­ma and Iran­ian cin­e­ma to the world.

Brody nar­rat­ed video essays on two films of Kiarostami’s. He calls 1999’s The Wind Will Car­ry Us (above) “the great­est of Kiarostami’s Iran­ian films,” a show­case for his com­bi­na­tion of “patient and lov­ing atten­tion to char­ac­ters drawn from dai­ly life and to their land­scapes with a pre­cise, can­ny, and fierce dis­til­la­tion of con­crete phe­nom­e­na into bril­liant, ver­tig­i­nous, and lib­er­at­ing abstrac­tions.” In 2012’s Tokyo-set Like Some­one in Love, Kiarostami’s final film, he “found him­self freer than usu­al to depict such ordi­nary events as a woman, her hair uncov­ered, in a bed­room with a man. But, fac­ing the seem­ing­ly lim­it­less free­dom of depic­tion, Kiarosta­mi inge­nious­ly revers­es the equa­tion; start­ing with the title and con­tin­u­ing with the very first shot, he ques­tions the dif­fer­ence between sim­u­la­tion and real­i­ty, between imi­ta­tion and being.”

Audi­ences every­where thrilled to Kiarostami’s treat­ment of those con­cepts, poten­tial­ly abstruse in the hands of oth­er film­mak­ers but nev­er in his, when he put them at the cen­ter of 2010’s Juli­ette Binoche-star­ing Cer­ti­fied Copy, the first film he made out­side Iran. In his video essay “The Dou­ble Life of James and Juli­ette: Mys­ter­ies and Per­cep­tions in Kiarostami’s Cer­ti­fied Copy,” cin­e­ma schol­ar Peter Labuza breaks down this many-lay­ered, mul­ti­fac­eted, mul­ti­lin­gual work, in one sense a no-frills rela­tion­ship dra­ma about a man and a woman who may or may not be or have been mar­ried, and in anoth­er a “com­plete and total enig­ma” deeply con­cerned with “the nature and role of per­cep­tion.”

Gra­ham Bol­lard’s “The Min­i­mal­ist Cin­e­ma of Abbas Kiarosta­mi” focus­es on the direc­tor’s aes­thet­ic choic­es, such as often shoot­ing inside cars, whose space “helps define the main char­ac­ter’s point of view” and repeat­ing a shot in such a way that “we, the audi­ence, are forced to view it in dif­fer­ent ways that take on dif­fer­ent mean­ings,” draw­ing visu­al evi­dence from Kiarostami’s Iran­ian films like Taste of Cher­ry, Ten, and Close-Up, from which Hamid Dabashi’s book Close Up: Iran­ian Cin­e­ma, Past, Present, and Future takes its name. The essay ends with a quote from it, describ­ing Kiarostami’s work as “there to fil­ter the world and thus strip it of all its cul­tures, nar­ra­tiv­i­ties, author­i­ties, and ide­olo­gies” — no small accom­plish­ment for one life­time in cin­e­ma.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inside the Renais­sance of Iran­ian Cin­e­ma

Watch a Video Essay on the Poet­ic Har­mo­ny of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Film­mak­ing, Then View His Major Films Free Online

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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