Stunning simplicity.

ABBAS KIAROSTAMI: VISIONS OF THE ARTIST

Victoria & Albert Museum

London, United Kingdom

April 27-June 19, 2005

Ever since the New Iranian Cinema attained critical acclaim on the international film festival circuit in the 1990s, viewers' love affair with filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has continued unabated. This past spring, a range of events in London celebrated Kiarostami's considerable body of work, paying homage to a film director often compared to Jean-Luc Godard. Along with the extensive retrospective of Kiarostami's cinematic works at the National Film Theatre, "Abbas Kiarostami: Visions of the Artist" included a series of interviews and conversations with film critics and directors such as Geoff Andrews and Mike Leigh, a film workshop with Kiarostami for 25 pre-selected participants, a three-day conference and a televised documentary. Throughout the conference an appreciation of the director's film work as well as his other artistic pursuits led to further discussions about the director's vision and the resulting synthesis of cinematic aesthetics with other artistic forms of expression.

Two installations at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V & A) articulate Kiarostami's formal preoccupations and aesthetic vision in different ways. Kiarostami's "Ta'ziyeh" (2003), an installation that referenced traditional Iranian theater, brought to the forefront a consideration of the interaction between the cinema and its spectators. In the London version of this installation (previously staged in Rome and Brussels), the ta'ziyeh is shown on a large screen, behind which two other screens showed close-up images of Iranian peasants whose facial expressions react to the action of the play. The installation, despite its recourse to an ancient Iranian theatrical tradition, echoed a fundamental element of Kiarostami's cinema: the self-reflexive layers of realities and meanings that allow the filmmaker to engage with his audiences and to comment on cotemporary Iranian culture and politics, however obliquely. Indeed, one could argue that this relationship between the cinema and its spectator is what gives the medium its political power. Kiarostami's understanding of this allows him to observe, critique and engage on a social realist level and with a considerably lighter and more effective touch than the cinematic deliverance of didactical themes and subject matters via linear narratives in many social realist films.

"Forest Without Leaves" (2005) presented a three-dimensional forest densely populated by tall, tubular structures masquerading as tree trunks. These tubes were carefully wallpapered with a texture similar to bark and were raised from the brown carpet that covered the floor. The created environment was reminiscent of the yellowish-green and somewhat parched Iranian landscape of Kiarostami's films. Nature in general, and trees in particular, are important recurring motifs in Kiarostami's work. "Forest Without Leaves" replicates the almost mystical moments in the forest in his 1994 film Through the Olive Trees, which offers a glimpse of Kiarostami's meditative relationship with nature that is most forcefully emphasized in his latest film, Five (2003). "Forest Without Leaves" paradoxically brings the natural landscape to the fore, as Kiarostami notes in the lavish program that accompanied the events: only when nature is framed and placed as artifice in a museum, or similar environments, do we recover the ability to observe it in detail. A sense of play is also prominent, as visitors were encouraged to enter this alluring magical installation, hide among the tree trunks and take pictures with their cell phones.

Given the levels of reflexivity that characterize Kiarostami's work, one naturally begins to read into the interaction that "Forest Without Leaves" encouraged. The installation's space provided yet another study of the relationship between Kiarostami's cinema and his spectators. Within an immersive environment that invites participation, visitors engaged with Kiarostami's complex and multi-faceted perspective on the function of art--which depends on layers of intertextual references, as evident in his films. One thinks of the last shot in Through the Olive Trees, an aerial view of Hussein, the protagonist, chasing the girl of his dreams through a forest of olive trees and across a vast green landscape. In the same way, "Forest Without Leaves" meditates on, and celebrates, the vastness and life-giving force of nature and our place in it.

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The exhibition of the filmmaker's photographic works accompanying the "Forest Without Leaves" installation at the V & A is a testament to a keen acknowledgement of the power of observation, which for Kiarostami is a pre-requisite for the existence of cinema. Entitled "Trees in Snow," the exhibition comprises six photographs of trees taken over more than two decades in the desolate Iranian winter landscape. The photographs are both stunning and confounding in their simplicity and in the commonalities that they share. However, if one is unfamiliar with Kiarostami's work, this set of photographs may be perceived as lacking any unique qualities. Conversely, when placed in context with his obsession with trees, the natural landscape and our powers of perception, one begins to see the artist's exploration of how the subject interacts with both form and content. Confronted with six photographs of trees in a snowy landscape, the viewer is discouraged from seeing diversity in content but instead is drawn into careful observation of the details in each photograph, to compare a series of repetitions and differences. The result is a different and more meditative way of looking. It provides insight into Kiarostami's cinematic vision, demands renewed attention to the cinematic images he creates and invites contemplation of the art-spectator interface.

The culmination of these explorations may be seen in Five, the film that was released in London as part of the Kiarostami events. The title refers to the five scenes that make up the film; all shot along the coast of the Caspian Sea, of seemingly random things. These include a piece of driftwood tossed about by the waves, people walking on the promenade bordering the coastline, wild dogs in the distance, ducks strolling up and down the beach in a single file and the moon accompanied by the sound of frogs croaking. Like the installations and the photographic exhibition, Five is deceptive in its simplicity. Shot on digital, it defies genre, narrative and form and further suggests the progress of the artist's thoughts on spectatorship. Kiarostami insisted in an interview in London's Guardian (staged at the National Film Theatre) that Five is not meant for the gallery, but should be seen in the cinema auditorium. His use of digital aesthetics in Five to manipulate, cheat and deceive (to hilarious proportions in the scene with ducks in a strangely meditative film) yet again emphasizes the significance of the audience for Kiarostami. Despite our suspicion of the politics of authorship, if one could hail another mortal as a cinematic genius and a visionary artist, Kiarostami is an excellent candidate in the digital age.

SHARON LIN TAY is Lecturer in Film Studies at Middlesex University in London, United Kingdom, where she teaches film theory, world cinema and digital culture.