Cinema Beyond The Frame

A tribute to the master artist, poet, photographer and filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016)

- Dr Yuhi Sethu

It was another may in Cannes of 1997; walking down the Promenade de la Croisette, taking photos with my still camera, carrying books, magazines and handouts of all kinds to my room to be couriered back home later, and savouring the vibrancy of the cinematic buzz all around. i used to attend the festival regularly as an importer of films, as a film student, critic, film actor and filmmaker or none of the above, but something special about that year was the two movies sharing the golden Palme d’or – Shohei imamura’s Unagi (The Eel) and Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry.

On my earlier visits, i have often seen Abbas Kiarostami at the Farabi Cinema Foundation stall in Cannes, sitting quietly with legs crossed, looking still with his tinted glasses, chiselled face and upright countenance, like the right candidate for erstwhile portrait painters. This image of reticence came to my mind often when i saw the poignant silence and telling quietude in his films later. but, like a typical Tamil movie fan, i divided the richness of Iranian cinema through the artificial dichotomy of movie icons that we often do back home – a Sivaji Ganesan fan versus an mgr fan, or a kamal haasan fan versus a Rajni fan – and so, imagined myself to be a mohsen makhmalbaf man, the other stalwart of Iranian cinema, and therefore felt shy or reluctant to meet Abbas Kiarostami. i became close enough with makhmalbaf to work in a couple of his films a decade later, which is why it was interesting for me to see them both work together in Abbas’s film Close-Up much later.