FEBRUARY 14–16, TUESDAY–THURSDAY
Abbas Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy
Jonathan Rosenbaum suggested that, “Movie trilogies can be created by either filmmakers or critics.” In the case of Abbas Kiarostami's Koker Trilogyit's the latter. Kiarostami denies the connection, yet the three films are united by their exquisitely poised balancing of fiction and reality, opening the medium to new formal experiences that have now become par for the world cinema course. Made between 1987 and 1994, these films portrayed a layer of Iran that had remained untouched by politics. Created as tributes to the preciousness of life, the films shifted the focus to the everyday and the mundane. Floating between reality and fiction, they explored universal concepts such as innocence, courage, desire, belief, life and death.


 
FEBRUARY 14, TUESDAY AT 8PM
Where Is the Friend's House?
(Abbas Kiarostami, 1987, Iran, 35mm, 87 min) The first film in what later became known as the Koker Trilogy, this turns a country schoolboy's determination to prevent a pal's expulsion for not having done his homework into a major geographical, moral and poetic odyssey, testing his ingenuity, nerve and resolve even as it teaches him about the cruelty and compromises of the adult world. A landmark in Kiarostami's career, this funny, frightening and poignant gem secured his international profile.



FEBRUARY 15, WEDNESDAY AT 8PM
And Life Goes On...
(Abbas Kiarostami, 1991, Iran, 35mm, 91 min) Shortly after a massive earthquake in Iran, Kiarostami returned to the mountain region that had been the setting for Where Is the Friend's House?A year later, he made a film inspired by that trip, about a filmmaker traveling with his son in search of two young actors who may have died. The result is an amazingly fruitful exploration of the relationship of life and death, despair and determination, reality and art.



FEBRUARY 16, THURSDAY AT 8PM
Through the Olive Trees
(Abbas Kiarostami, 1994, Iran/France, 35mm, 103 min) The final Koker film, this time with Kiarostami recreating the (real-life? fictional?) romantic problems arising between two cast members during the filming of And Life Goes On... It is fascinating both as a warm-but-wry tale of life, love and the cinema, and as a multi-layered interweaving of related narratives. At one point we even see two actors playing Kiarostami surrogates and talking to one another!