Loading Events
  • This event has passed.

May 22, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Kiarostami Kids: ABC Africa and shorts

w/ Keith Uhlich (Time Out New York) and Aaron Cutler (Slant)

Long before he made his meta-masterful excursion to Tuscany with Juliette Binoche (Certified Copy), the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami honed his skills writing and directing instructional shorts for Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA). His talent for eliciting superb child performances is evident right from his debut—the sublime, deceptively straightforward Bread and Alley (1970), which we’re screening here with two other IIDCYA shorts, Breaktime (1972) and Two Solutions for One Problem (1975). Those expecting “duck and cover”-like propaganda will be surprised by the films’ emotional directness and philosophical complexity. They are poems in motion, with no facile resolutions. We’ve also programmed Kiarostami’s ABC Africa (2001), his first video feature (shot on consumer-grade cameras), which takes an intimate look at Africa’s AIDS crisis. Surprisingly, the tone is often buoyant, especially whenever children are onscreen. The juxtaposition of their curious play with the ceaseless devastation surrounding them is deeply affecting.-Keith Uhlich

ABC Africa by Abbas Kiarostami

Iran/Uganda, 2001, 84 minutes, 16mm, English and Farsi with English subtitles.

A documentary shot on digital video about the ravages of AIDS and civil war in Uganda, may seem at first like a radical departure for the director of “Taste of Cherry” and “The Wind Will Carry Us”.  But one of the most remarkable things about “ABC Africa” is the way Iran’s most celebrated autuer makes such unlikely material very much his own.  Invited by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development  to shoot a documentary about Uganda’s orphans, Kiarostami and his cameraman Seifollah Samadian travelled around the country scouting locations, using mini-dv cameras to make visual notes.  In true Kiarostami style, these jottings become the movie itself: an impressionistic, deceptively simple record of a visit, a journey, and a people struggling to survive.  Most strongly reminiscent of “And Life Goes On…” (in which a filmmaker journeys to the site of a devastating earthquake), “ABC Africa” is full of echoes of his previous films: the hypnotic  tracking shots from car windows, the dirt-road villages, and especially the emphasis on the resilience and resourcefulness of children.  Out of a population of 22 million, Uganda has 2 million people infected with HIV, 2 million already dead, and 1.6 million orphans, and, over the course of the ten day visit, Kiarostami comes across many heart-breaking sights (a child’s body being wrapped in cardboard; a village where al the men have dies)  Yet “ABC Africa” is ultimately an optimistic film, full of smiling faces, and, above all, full of music–heard on the street, played on car radios, and sung rapturously in school yards.

Bread and Alley

Iran, 1970, 10 minutes, digital projection

 

Kiarostami’s debut: A (not-so) simple tale of boy vs. dog.

BreaktimeIran, 1972, 14 minutes, digital projection

It ain’t easy being a soccer-lover, in school or out.

Two Solutions for One ProblemIran, 1975, 4 minutes, digital projection

The problem: A ripped notebook. Two (equally valid?) solutions.

Aaron Cutler has written about Kiarostami for Cineaste, Moving Image Source, and Slant Magazine. He lived in New York for three years while earning an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Columbia before moving to São Paulo, where he currently lives. His film writings can be found at here.

 

Keith Uhlich is a staff film critic at Time Out New York and the editor of The House Next Door, the official blog of Slant Magazine.

 

 

Presented with

Details

Date
May 22, 2011
Time
7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Program:

Support UnionDocs’ next phase and new building by becoming a member

Peek in the window of our bustling building in NYC and tune into the ideas and energy bubbling up from the UNDO Center.

Tune into cutting-edge, powerful and poetic documentary programs and connect to conversations with the artists and thinkers passing through.

Now available at the Apple Store.

MONTHLY

 

Unlimited access to all of our monthly offerings for the price of two espressos.

ANNUALLY

 

Keep it simple and save. Unlimited access to our sweet offerings for a reduced, annual fee and receive some added benefits.

LOCAL, ARTIST, STUDENT OR SENIOR

 

In the neighborhood, a working artist, student or senior? This membership is for you. Fill out a quick form for a discount code to an annual membership.

ANNUAL EDITIONS MEMBERSHIP

 

Get all of the benefits of the Annual UNDO Membership plus an annual subscription to UnionDocs Editions, a set of publications, merchandise or special objects.

UnionDocs is grateful for support from:

Do you have Artistic Differences?

Join our monthly cineclub each month & listen in to the interview podcast for a thoughtful community around films that demand deeper discussion.

The-UNDO-Fellowship-2024-Marketing-1920x1080

The UNDO Fellowship

UnionDocs is honored to share the selection of artists and writers for the UNDO Fellowship.