Majid Majidi's Reaction to Samadian's Documentary on Kiarostami

After watching the documentary 'On the Road with Abbas Kiarostami' by Seifollah Samadian at the 31st Busan International Film Festival, Majid Majidi praised the film and Abbas Kiarostami.

After watching the documentary "On the Road with Abbas Kiarostami" by Saifullah Samadian at the 30th Busan International Film Festival, Majid Majidi praised this documentary and Abbas Kiarostami.

According to Ambassador Arjan, the documentary "On the Road with Abbas Kiarostami" by Saifullah Samadian was screened in its first world premiere in the documentary competition section of the 30th Busan International Film Festival. The show was accompanied by a question-and-answer session with the presence of the director, and at the end of it, Majid Majidi spoke about the impact of watching this film, especially its final episode. Majid Majidi, a cinema director who is in the main competition section of the festival with the film "Ghazai Nimroz", was one of the viewers of this documentary.

At the end of the session, referring to his long-time friendship with Samadian, he spoke about the experience of watching the film and the special impact of its final part.

Majidi began his conversation by recalling his first feature film and said: "In 1992, for my first film, "Badok", I invited Mr. Samadian (who was a famous photographer at the time) to accept the shooting of the film; But he did not accept this job with a special trick! It was natural for me to be a little upset, but my friendship with Samadian continues to this day."

Stating that he had seen some of Samadian's works before, he said about the experience of watching the documentary "On the Road with Abbas Kiarostami": "Tonight, when I saw this documentary, especially the last episode, I was so moved that I wanted to talk about it with you here."

This cinema director continued, emphasizing the importance of Samadian's approach to recording moments and situations, and said that he could have been a capable cinematographer in Iranian cinema in addition to photography; But in that case, maybe the empty place of a kind of documentary cinema presented by Samadian will still remain.

Majidi then praised Samadian's way of working by pointing out the limitations of filming in the interior of the car and explained: "When we want to make a movie, we see the location and check all the angles to design the best positions and angles." Now think that you are in the limited space of the car and you don't know what is going to happen; Despite all the limitations of maneuvering, his camera has recorded the most beautiful plans.

He emphasized that in this part of his speech, rather than speaking about Kiarostami, he intends to discuss Samadian's filmmaking method; Especially in the final episode of the documentary.

Describing this episode, Majidi said: "Until today, we used to say that Kiarostami is the "poet" of Iranian cinema. Now, after seeing this episode, I can add that Kiarostami is the "philosopher" of Iranian cinema, and we get all this feeling from Samadian's camera."

He went on to point out Samadian's visual choices, saying that while the camera moves behind Kiarostami, it doesn't invade his privacy, doesn't get too close to his face, and instead depicts a blue tanker moving down a snow-covered road.

Majidi considered this method as an example of pure documentary cinema and in the end said that the final episode of the film is so poetic that he can talk about it for hours.

The 88-minute documentary "On the Road with Kiarostami" narrates Samadian's visual memories of accompanying him on road trips. In this film, Samadian has tried to depict Kiarostami's deep connection with the road, cars and nature as the two main motifs of his cinema, in addition to representing Kiarostami's personal, intimate and unseen moments by using archival images and shots recorded in the heart of Iran's nature.

In this documentary, well-known figures such as Jafar Panahi (with a special appearance since 1380), Tahereh Ladanian and Shahreh Golperian and artists from Japan such as Terio Nogami and Kimiko Onishi are present. Also, this film is dedicated to the memory of Hamida Razavi, Kenzo Horukoshi, Mohammad Ali Keshavarz, Hossein Rezaei, Mahbanu Darabi and Ahmad Ahmadpour.

The 31st Busan International Film Festival started on October 6 (October 14) and will continue until October 15 (October 23).