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.
Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my efforts to create an equivalent with paint color for the world, life as I see it.
I adore wearing gems, but not because they are mine. You can't possess radiance, you can only admire it.
Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.
It's the first time in the history of the world that creatives are also distributors. And that's very profound if you think that up until the recent history, permission was required for us to be able to share work at any sort of scale. We had to get permission from galleries, from ad agencies or photo editors to be able to have our work out there. And now anybody with access to a computer can show their work in 200 countries around the world.
Good design is ubiquitous and forever.
An art thief is a man who takes pictures.
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