Twenty First: A Film Festival By Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University (6th December, 2013): Nema-Ye Nazdik (Close Up) by Abbas Kiarostami

Date of Screening: 6^th December, 2013

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Cast: Hossain Sabzian, Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Country: Iran

Today, it was Faculty of Fine Arts which introduced me to the works of Abbas Kiarostami for the first time. The only piece of information I had read before was a scathing review by Mr. Ebert of one of his most acclaimed films ‘Taste of Cherry’, which won the Palme d’Or at the 1997 Cannes film festival. Ebert hasn’t been kind to many of Kiarostami’s pictures; he awarded the above-mentioned film a single star out of four, and in another review, wrote that ‘he was unable to grasp the greatness of the director’. One critical remark made by the influential critic was that Kiarostami did not communicate the intended message of the film with passion, thus resulting in a tedious watch.

I got to the campus exactly at 18:20, it may have taken me a minute to reach the venue. This was the second time I was tardy by about twenty minutes, and coincidently, the name of the film festival is ‘Twenty First’! Anyway, when I got inside the screening room, the first thing I saw on screen was an elderly man in an

imamah, or a Muslim turban. I also observed that there were way fewer patrons that evening, and so I could comfortably get my seat ahead. Without the brochure, I had no clue about the film or its director; it was only after the film that I was told that the film’s name was ‘Close-Up’ and its director was Kiarostami.

What perplexed me all the more when

I learnt the courtroom trial recorded in the film was actual footage of the curious case of Mr. Hossain Sabzian. When Kiarostami panned his camera to the fellow crew members holding the boom mic and other recording devices, I (considering I missed the first twenty minutes) assumed it was a documentary, but then came the flashback sequences featuring the same actors, including the ‘accused’, and I dispelled that notion and considered the film a fictional work. I later learned that Kiarostami somehow convinced both the accused and the plaintiffs to reenact some of the events of the case. This itself was a great feat for the director, in my opinion.

After the screening, I approached one of the organizers and requested him to send the schedule as soon as possible. There were way fewer patrons at the free event, and an event like this deserves a larger crowd. I got to know they would be screening ‘Dreams’ by Akira Kurosawa on 7^th December. I’ve seen Kurosawa’s Rashomon, one of the director’s greatest achievements, and Wikipedia informs me that Dreams is a ‘magic realism film based on actual dreams of the film’s director, Akira Kurosawa’. I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Note: The review of ‘Nema-Ye Nazdik’ shall be uploaded soon.