Good cinema is what we can believe, and bad cinema is what we can't believe.
Interpretation
Good cinema evokes belief and emotional truth, while bad cinema fails to resonate authentically with the audience.
Abbas Kiarostami's quote highlights the essence of cinema as an art form that aims to create a believable and immersive experience for viewers. Good cinema draws the audience in with relatable narratives and authentic portrayals, enabling us to suspend disbelief and connect with the story, characters, and emotions. In contrast, bad cinema often suffers from unrealistic plots, poor character development, or lackluster performances, which alienate audiences and prevent them from engaging fully with the film.
In practice
During a discussion on film quality, one might quote Kiarostami to emphasize the importance of believability in art.
Digital photography is, by definition, unfinished. You don't feel that after every 24 or 36 shots you have to change your film - you know you can go on for ever if you want. You can see the result immediately, and find out if your original idea is worth going on with or not, whether it can be corrected, whether it can be improved.
When I talk to some of the younger filmmakers, they are so worried about their films that, eventually, this state of being worried reflects itself in and helps the final work. Whereas, with projects that are meticulously planned, you look at the end result and it is full of emptiness.
From my very first movie, what was my concentration, my inspiration, was I didn't want to narrate something, I didn't want to tell a story. I wanted to show something, I wanted for them to make their own story from what they were seeing.
As film-makers, it is very important for us to find common ground between cultures, and maybe that's less the case for politicians who benefit more from finding the conflicts and differences between us.
Cinema gives you the opportunity to be both a grandparent and a grandchild whereas in life you cannot be both at the same time.
The calling of art is to extract us from our daily reality, to bring us to a hidden truth that's difficult to access - to a level that's not material but spiritual.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths.
Although I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet.
The arts have always served relationships between people of different cultures so well. In a way, the arts function as a very serious kind of ambassador.
Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor - to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.
[May 1958, on playing Macbeth at age 30 and age 48] When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
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