Abbas Kiarostami Retrospective. A Return to the New

One hundred and fourteen Iranian theater and film actresses, as well as one famous Frenchwoman, Juliette Binoche, are watching a film adaptation of the twentieth-century Persian poem Khosrow and Shirin about the impossible love of the Sasanian shah and the Armenian princess. Although viewers won’t see a single shot from that film, they will understand everything by the women’s faces, coming and going approximately every thirty seconds, as well as by the soundtrack composed of voices, music, sounds of galloping and sword fights. An exploration of the spectator’s perception and the relationship between document and fiction, the visible and the hidden, Abbas Kiarostami’s experimental picture premiered at the 2008 Venice Film Festival. Garage Screen will host the Russian premiere of its restored version.

BUY TICKETS

British writer James Miller travels to Tuscany on a tour to present his latest book, Certified Copy, devoted to forgeries and originals in life and art, in which Miller postulates that authenticity as a category has lost all meaning. Originally entitled Forget About the Original—Buy a Good Copy, the book claims that the original is a copy of the original thing and the reproduction itself is a new thing. A French woman who sells antiques and who Miller does not know comes to the presentation and invites him to spend the day together. During trips and walks in picturesque, sun-lit Tuscany, the woman begins to pretend to be Miller’s wife, thereby embodying and undermining his theory at the same time. Abbas Kiarostami’s wily intellectual rom-com, his first feature film outside his native Iran, premiered at the 2010 Cannes Festival, winning Juliette Binoche the Best Actress Award. Garage Screen presents the Russian premiere of the restored version of the picture.

Akiko is a sociology student in Tokyo who moonlights as an elite prostitute. One evening, the pimp sends her to his longtime friend Takashi, a retired writer and university professor. Instead of having sex, they discuss their families, discovering a lot in common. But the idyll collapses the next day when Takashi, who drives the girl to the exam, intersects with her jealous boyfriend Noriaki and is forced to pretend to be her granddad. Kiarostami’s second feature film shot outside Iran, and his last lifetime film was premiered at the 2012 Cannes Festival. Garage Screen presents the Russian premiere of the restored version of the picture.

With the short Take Me Home, Kiarostami returned, following a decades-long break, to black and white imagery, as well as his early pictures’ main theme—childhood. Meanwhile, in the feature-length experimental 24 Frames, that would become his final work, the director set in motion his own photographs and other people’s famous paintings, imagining what happened before and after the moments they capture. Garage Screen presents a double screening of Abbas Kiarostami’s last films, completed posthumously by his fellow filmmakers.