Fall Film Series: Celebrating Iranian Cinema

Thursday, November 2 at 8pm

This night will showcase films by two acclaimed Iranian directors; host Max Fenton says: “These films are beautiful and were made in times of great struggle. They are poignant films about small moments in small places that are as small and filled as our own places we each occupy. Only, for some reason, because they were made faraway we forget that those faraway places are made up of small and poignant moments and beautiful desolate places, too. Let us watch these films about being human, while we are humans, and laugh when they are funny and cry when they are sad.”

Abbas Kiarostami’s 1987 film Where is the Friend’s Home? follows eight-year-old Ahmed as he desperately tries to return a notebook to his classmate, who will be expelled from school if the book is not returned. This film is often compared to The Bicycle Thief for it’s ability to comment on responsibility and morality in an impoverished culture by following the simple quest of it’s protagonist; it’s also the first film in a rough trilogy, introducing characters that Kiarostami would return to in Life and Nothing More and Through the Olive Trees.

The second part of this double-bill will be Bread and Flower (a.k.a. A Moment of Innocence), Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s 1995 film in which the director encounters various difficulties while attempting to re-enact a violent incident from his adolescence; the result is a thrilling post-modern masterpiece that also functions as a poignant statement about youth in rebellion and changing attitudes in Iranian culture.