From my very first movie, what was my concentration, my inspiration, was I didn't want to narrate something, I didn't want to tell a story. I wanted to show something, I wanted for them to make their own story from what they were seeing.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of visual storytelling over narrative storytelling.
Abbas Kiarostami expresses his artistic intention to engage the audience in a deeper way by allowing them to interpret the visuals and create their own narratives rather than simply relaying a predetermined story. This approach prioritizes personal perception and emotional response, making the experience of cinema more interactive and subjective.
In practice
This quote can be used in an art class to inspire students to express their own meanings through their work.
Digital photography is, by definition, unfinished. You don't feel that after every 24 or 36 shots you have to change your film - you know you can go on for ever if you want. You can see the result immediately, and find out if your original idea is worth going on with or not, whether it can be corrected, whether it can be improved.
When I talk to some of the younger filmmakers, they are so worried about their films that, eventually, this state of being worried reflects itself in and helps the final work. Whereas, with projects that are meticulously planned, you look at the end result and it is full of emptiness.
Good cinema is what we can believe, and bad cinema is what we can't believe.
As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that's less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.
Cinema gives you the opportunity to be both a grandparent and a grandchild whereas in life you cannot be both at the same time.
The calling of art is to extract us from our daily reality, to bring us to a hidden truth that's difficult to access - to a level that's not material but spiritual.
A writer wants something more than money for his work: he wants permanence.
When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.
I imposed black; it still going strong today, for black wipes out everything else around
Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!
Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.
The picture is in your head, in your imagination, everything.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.