Two evenings dedicated to giants of Iranian new wave and experimental cinema.
Curated by Nesa Azimi.

Box office open for advance ticket purchases Mon-Fri 12-6 & from 1 hour before until the end of all events. During these hours, knock on the window if door is locked.

Salaam Cinema
Dir. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran, 1995, 70 min.
"No one knows better than Makhmalbaf that Iranians are movie mad, so when he placed a casting call for one hundred actors for a new film, he expected a crowd; what he got was a crush, 5,000 people just this side of a hadj. After genially announcing, "You are both the subject and the actors in the film," he begins auditions. What unfolds is a parade of individuals who, for love of cinema, are by turns brash, crafty, shy, touchingly open, unwittingly hilarious. From would-be Paul Newmans to women who are intellectual rebels under their chadors, this is very much about "casting." Makhmalbaf plays the film director as judge, tease, and actor. A brilliant exposé of the film that is in the hearts of a people, and the people that are the heart of cinema, this is experimental filmmaking in every sense, yet what we feel most is the director's controlling hand-precisely the paradox Makhmalbaf is exploring." -Pacific Film Archive

More about "Kiarostami + Makhmhalbaf": Situated somewhere between documentary and fiction, both Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up and Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Salaam Cinema are works that lead us to question conventional notions of these genres, and not least, ask us to rethink the traditional relationship between artist and audience. Shown together, both films are cinematic tributes of sorts to the public, the audience that is traditionally--when it comes to narrative film anyway--excluded from the stuff of filmmaking. In both films, the audience is at the very heart of the story; they are its primary subjects.

Close-Up
(Nama-ye nazdik)
Dir. Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1990, 100 min.
"A newspaper article caught Abbas Kiarostami's eye: an unemployed young film buff had wormed his way into the home and hearts of a well-to-do family by impersonating the well-known director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. From this story Kiarostami made an offbeat film about cinema, the swindle and the dream. He enters the story cinema verité–style, recreating events leading up to the impostor's exposure and arrest, then following the actual court proceedings. In droll reenactments by obliging real-life protagonists, and in its pathetic hero, the film at times plays like Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run ('Let him have his lunch!' the mother says to the arresting gendarmes). Certainly, Hossein Sabzian's accusers attribute to him a craftiness he doesn't possess. His failing is a naiveté that is shared by many: Close-Up is a very moving and surprising film about anomie and the creative responses to it."—Judy Bloch

More about "Kiarostami + Makhmhalbaf": Situated somewhere between documentary and fiction, both Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up and Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Salaam Cinema are works that lead us to question conventional notions of these genres, and not least, ask us to rethink the traditional relationship between artist and audience. Shown together, both films are cinematic tributes of sorts to the public, the audience that is traditionally--when it comes to narrative film anyway--excluded from the stuff of filmmaking. In both films, the audience is at the very heart of the story; they are its primary subjects.