Fiction Criticizing Reality: Abbas Kiarostami and the Cracked Windshield of Cinema

Authors

  • James Blake Ewing Graduated from Baylor University with a MA in Communication Studies

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2013.77

Keywords:

Documentary, Reality, Cinema, Abbas Kiarostami, Fiction, Close-Up

Abstract

This article argues that Abbas Kiarostami uses documentaries and fiction films to examine the distinction between reality and fiction. Through the use of an arthouse style of filmmaking, the insertion of a surrogate director into the narrative and a recurring breakdown in technology, Kiarostami demonstrates that film’s ability to capture reality is a flawed, sometimes broken, endeavor.

References

Ayers, Jackson. “Orson Welles’s ‘Complicitous Critique.” Literature Film Quarterly 40, no. 1 (2012): 6-19.

Bransford, Stephen. “Days in the Country: Representations of Rural Space and Place in Abbas Kiarostami’s Life, and Nothing More, Through the Olive Trees and The Wind Will Carry Us.” Sense of Cinema, Dec 2003. http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/29/abbas-kiarostami/kiarostami_rural_space_and_place/.

Cheshire, Godfrey. “Confessions of a Sin-ephile.” Cinema Scope 2, no. 6 (2000): 3-8.

---. “How to Read Kiarostami,” Cineaste 25, no. 4 (2000): 8-15.

---. “Godfrey Cheshire on Close-Up.” Slant. 29 Mar. 2010. http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/godfrey-cheshire-on-closeup-abbas-kiarostami-1990.

---. “Prison and Escape.” New York: Criterion, 2010.

Dabashi, Hamid. Close-Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, and Future. London: Verso, 2001.

---. Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema. Washington D.C.: Mage Publishers, 2007.

Elena, Alberto. The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami. London: SAQI, 2005.

Frodon, Jean-Michel. “Fictional Truth and Digital Reality.” China Perspectives 71 (2007): 126-129.

Mulvey, Laura. Death 24x Per Second. London, Reaktion, 2006.

Önala, Hülya, and Meral Özçınar. “Tracing the Truth within the Blurring Borders of Fiction and Documentary.” Journal of Yasar University 21, no. 6 (2011): 3563-3571.

Saeed-Vafa, Merhrnaz, and Jonathan Rosenbaum. Abbas Kiarostami. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Shapiro, Ann-Louse. “How Real is the Reality in Documentary Film?.” History and Theory 36, no. 4 (1997): 80-101.

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Published

2014-04-08

How to Cite

Ewing, J. B. (2014). Fiction Criticizing Reality: Abbas Kiarostami and the Cracked Windshield of Cinema. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 3(1), 28–46. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2013.77

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2013): Fall 2013

Section

Articles

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