April 25, 2008

7:00 pm

Iranian Film Series

Zir-e darakhtan-e zeyton = Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami Productions, Iran, 1994). Dir & Wrt Abbas Kiarostami. With Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, Hossein Rezai, Zarifeh Shiva, Tahereh Ladanian. (103 min, color, 35mm, in Persian with English subtitles)

Through the Olive Trees is the final part of Kiarostami’s Earthquake Trilogy, and the plot revolves around the production of the second episode, Life, and Nothing More…, which itself was a revisitation of the first film, Where Is the Friend’s Home?. Like many of Kiarostami’s films, it is filmed in a simplistic, naturalistic way, while also being a complex study of the link between art and life, constantly blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality. Rezai plays a local stonemason turned actor who, outside the film set, makes a marriage proposal to his leading lady, a student recently orphaned after the earthquake. She considers his offer insulting however, as he is poor and illiterate, and refuses to speak to him again. She continues to ignore him even when they are filming, as she seems to have trouble grasping the difference between her role and real life.

free as always
information here:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/pickford/pickford-current.html

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