I wrote about Mehrjui, and about Baizai, but not about him because the world had already discovered him when I learned to write in English.
I discovered him when I was a renegade 18-year old poet and skipped my Electrical Engineering classes, to snuggle in the back of the Cinemas Asre-Jadid (Modern Times), near my university and to discover cinema with Tarkovsky and the opposite of Tarkovsky, Kiarostami, in repeat viewing of Homework, Where Is the Friend's Home? and Close-Up .
I left Iran around that time, and his films did not leave me alone. Omnipresent in international festivals, Kiarostami and a wave of alike films out of Iran, became the rope of cultural pride to which I clung, as an immigrant from the unwanted country of Iran ...
And Kiarostami, his films, his depth, his peace, his gaze is responsible, single handedly responsible for putting The Iranian New Wave on the map of the world cinema. I never wrote about him, because the world was busy writing about him and about many of his students, such as Jafar Panahi. But if it were not these filmmakers, if their proactive debunking of all the falsehood the world media is capable of feeding innocent minds, I am convinced, Iran will not have been living the peace which was taken from its less culturally-active neighbors.
Kiarostami ,,, the man who refused to acknowledge the violence in world, and in the midst of pain and agony, death and rubble, talked and saw LIFE AND NOTHING ELSE.(*)
Thank you and so long ...
Tears don't stop ...
The Experience 1973
The Traveler 1974
So Can I 1975
Two Solutions for One Problem 1975
Colors, 1976
A Wedding Suit, 1976
Report 1977
First Case, Second Case 1979
Toothache 1980
Orderly or Disorderly 1981
The Chorus 1982
Fellow Citizen 1983
The Key 1987
Homework. 1989
The Journey 1995 (for Panahi)
ABC Africa 2001
Ten 2002
Five, 2003
Shirin 2008
Certified Copy 2010,
Like Someone in Love 2012
