Godard said: Cinema begins with Griffiths and ends with Abbas.
Abbas Kiarostami was born in Tehran, Iran, and the master filmmaker single-handedly made Iranian cinema known to the world.
At the 2017 Shanghai International Film Festival, I had the privilege of seeing all of Abbas's works on the big screen. Today, I recommend a few of his masterpieces to everyone to have a new understanding of Iranian cinema.
Douban score 8.6 points, simple story, innocent and beautiful.
The protagonist accidentally takes the homework book from the same table when he is out of school, and he remembers that the teacher threatened to fire him if the same table did not complete the homework during the day.
The little boy had to embark on the arduous journey of returning homework books to his table when the night was approaching.
Not knowing where the village where his table mate lived, he ran into walls everywhere and kept looking.
A simple little story that allows us to see the innocence of children, and the small yellow flowers in the homework book at the end of the movie warm everyone.
The film won the Art Film Award at the 42nd Cannes Film Festival.
Douban scored 8.3 points, a movie about making movies.
After the great earthquake in Iran, a director took the film crew to the small countryside and selected two young men and women with no acting experience, Hussein and Tahli.
Before the earthquake, Hussein was a poor boy, Tahli had a good family, and the two were not from the same world.
The earthquake destroyed everything in Tahli, and Hussein was still the poor boy.
During the filming, Hussein fell in love with Tahli, and he said the wrong lines and did the wrong actions over and over again, just so that he could say a few more words to Tahli, but Tahli ignored him.
After the filming of Tahli walking home, Hussein runs through a zigzag mountain path through an olive grove, and in this long shot of the big long-range, we see Hussein catching up with Tahli, who must be confessing.
"Lover Under the Olive Tree", "Where Is My Friend's Home", and "Born and Grow" together constitute Abbas's "country trilogy". The three films are virtual and real, which together constitute the Iranian countryside.
"Raw Growth Stream" Douban score of 8.6 points, this movie is more like a record, recording the scene after the earthquake.
People did not indulge in sad emotions, but chose to face it positively and rebuild their homes.
Abbas searches all the way through the movie for the little boy in "Where Is My Friend's Home", making it impossible to distinguish between which is reality and which is the movie, and this is the charm of Abbas.
In addition to the "country trilogy", Abbas's "Taste of Cherries", "Passing Away with the Wind", "Close-ups" and so on are all masterpieces of Iranian cinema.
Abbas's influence on Iranian cinema is all-encompassing, as can be seen in the documentary 76 minutes and 15 seconds with Abbas Kiarostami.