NEW YORKER FILMS PRESENTS THE WIND WILL CARRY US A film by Abbas Kiarostami OFFICIAL SELECTION 1999 Venice & Toronto Film Festivals Press Contacts: Susan Wrubel Norman Wang/ New Yorker Films Sophie Gluck 16 West 61 Street 154 Mott Street New York, NY 10023 New York, NY 10013 Ph. 212-247-6110 x 204 Ph. 212-226-3269 Fax 212-307-7855 Fax 212-941-1425 email: [email protected] email: [email protected] THE WIND WILL CARRY US CREDITS AND CAST Screenplay and Direction Abbas Kiarostami Based on an Idea By Mahmoud Ayedin Director of Photography Mahmoud kalari Sound Mixer Jahangir Mirshekari Assistant Director Bahman Ghobadi Editor Abbas Kiarostami Script Supervisor Nasrin Asgari Sound Editor Mohamad Hassan Najm Music Payman Yazdanian Production MK2 Productions/Marin Karmitz (France) Abbas Kiarostami (Iran) The Engineer Behzad Dourani The Inhabitants of the Village of Siah Dareh Shot on location in Iranian Kurdistan France/Iran 1999 Color 35mm 1:85 118mn SYNOPSIS The Engineer (Dourani) and his crew travel from Tehran in a Jeep, looking for the remote mountain village of Siah Dareh, in Iranian Kurdistan. They are met by Farzad, a young boy from the village, who becomes their guide. The Engineer and his crew (who ironically are never shown on-screen) are there to record a special ritual ceremony that will be determined by the fate of a certain Mrs. Malek. However, the locals believe that they are archeologists looking for buried treasure in an old cemetery. The crew only plans on staying in Siah Dareh for a few days but their trip continues to be extended as Mrs. Malek’s health starts improving. The crafty Engineer befriends Farzad in order to get reports on Mrs. Malek’s condition. Although the film’s basic themes are life and death, the story is suffused with irony and humor. Most ironic of all is the “grand event” for which the men have come: the death of Mrs. Malek and the macabre village mourning rite that follows it. Evocative and direct, THE WIND WILL CARRY US is constructed with Kiarostami’s trademark soulful serenity and minimalist approach. ABOUT THE DIRECTOR Abbas Kiarostami, born in Tehran on June 22, 1940, took an interest in drawing at an early age. Upon passing the entrance exam for a graphic art course, he left the family home at age 18. From 1960 to 1968, he designed some titles for fiction films, including those for M. Kimiai’s renowned GHEYSHAR. While working as a clerk in a police station, he enrolled at the Fine Arts School. In 1969, he founded the Cinema Department of the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. This department subsequently became one of the most prestigious studios in Iran. Directors who have worked there include A. Naderi, B. Bayzaï, D. Mehrjui, E. Forozesh, Dj. Panahi, Sobrah Sh. Saless… Since 1970, Abbas Kiarostami has shot a large number of short films and features. His favorite subject until 1991 was childhood. He likes to work with non-professional actors in natural settings. His work is imbued with Chekhovian humor and tinged with poetry. He has been a jury member in a number of festivals: Locarno in 1990, Cannes in 1993, Venice in 1985, San Sebastian in 1996. He won the Cannes Palme d’Or in 1997 for TASTE OF CHERRY. FILMOGRAPHY Short and Medium Length Films 1970 BREAD AND ALLEY (Nan va koutcheh) 1972 BREAKTIME (Zang e tafrih) 1973 THE EXPERIENCE (Tadjrobeh) 1975 TWO SOLUTIONS FOR ONE PROBLEM (Dow rahe hal baraye yek massaleh) 1975 SO CAN I (Man ham mitonam) 1976 THE WEDDING SUIT (Lebassi baraye arossi) 1976 THE COLORS (Rang ha) 1978 SOLUTION (Rah hal yek) 1979 CASE No. 1, CASE No. 2 (Ghazieh shekle aval, Ghazieh shekle douwom) 1980 TOOTHACHE (Behdasht Dandan) 1981 REGULARLY OR IRREGULARLY (Betarib va bedone tartib) 1982 THE CHORUS (Hamsarayan) 1983 FELLOW CITIZEN (Hamshahri) Features 1974 THE TRAVELER (Mossafer) 1977 THE REPORT (Guozarech) 1984 FIRST GRADERS (Avali ha) 1987 WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE? (Kaneh-ye doust kojast?) 1990 HOMEWORK (Mashgh e shab) 1990 CLOSE UP (Nema-ye Nazdik) 1992 AND LIFE GOES ON (Zendegi edamé dârad) 1994 THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES (Zir e Darakhtan e zeyton) 1996 TASTE OF CHERRY (Tam’ e Guilass) *Winner Palme d’Or, Cannes 1997 THE WIND WILL CARRY US by Forough Farrokhzad (poem taken from the film) In my night, so brief, alas The wind is about to meet the leaves. My night so brief is filled with devastating anguish Hark! Do you hear the whisper of the shadows? There, in the night, something is happening The moon is red and anxious. And, clinging to this roof That could collapse at any moment, The clouds, like a crowd of mourning women, Await the birth of the rain. One second, and then nothing. Behind this window, The night trembles And the earth stops spinning. Behind this window, a stranger worries about me and you. You in our greenery, Lay your hands – those burning memories – On my loving hands. And entrust your lips, replete with life’s warmth, To the touch of my loving lips The wind will carry us! The wind will carry us! Forough Farrokhzad was born in Tehran in 1934 and published her first collection of poems The Captive, in 1952. This was followed by The Rebellion in 1959. Forough’s poetic prime began with her book, Another Birth. Following her divorce, she lost custody of her only child, a son. Even after adopting the son of a couple of lepers, she continued to suffer from this loss. From 1958 on, she took an interest in both the theater and the cinema. Her first film as director, THE HOUSE IS BLACK, a film on a leper colony, won the Best Documentary Film prize in Germany. The following year, she performed in a production of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. In 1965, UNESCO and Bernardo Bertolucci each made a film about her life. In 1967, at the age of 33, she died in a car accident. AN UNFINISHED CINEMA Originally, I thought that the lights went out in a movie theatre so that we could see the images on the screen better. Then I looked a little closer at the audience settling comfortably into the seats and saw that there was a much more important reason: the darkness allowed the members of the audience to isolate themselves from others and to be alone. They were both with others and distant from them. When we reveal a film’s world to the members of an audience, they each learn to create their own world through the wealth of their own experience. As a filmmaker, I rely on this creative intervention for, otherwise, the film and the audience will die together. Faultless stories that work perfectly have one major defect: they work too well to allow the audience to intervene. It is a fact that films without a story are not very popular with audiences, yet a story also requires gaps, empty spaces like in a crossword puzzle, voids that it is up to the audience to fill in. Or, like a private detective in a thriller to discover. I believe in a type of cinema that gives greater possibilities and time to its audience. A half-created cinema, an unfinished cinema that attains completion through the creative spirit of the audience, so resulting in hundreds of films. It belongs to the members of that audience and corresponds to their own world. The world of each work, of each film recounts a new truth. In the darkened theatre, we give everyone the chance to dream and to express his dream freely. If art succeeds in changing things and proposing new ideas, it can only do so via the free creativity of the people we are addressing – each individual member of the audience. Between the fabricated and ideal world of the artist and that of the person he addresses, there is a solid and permanent bond. Art allows the individual to create his truth according to his own wishes and criteria; it also allows him to reject other imposed truths. Art gives each artist and his audience the opportunity to have a more precise view of the truth concealed behind the pain and passion that ordinary people experience every day. A filmmaker’s commitment to attempting to change daily life can only reach fruition through the complicity of the audience. The latter is active only if the film creates a world full of contradictions and conflicts that the audience members are able to perceive. The formula is simple: there is a world that we consider real but not completely just. This world is not the fruit of our minds and it does not suit us all that well but, through cinematic techniques, we create a world that is one hundred times more real and just than the one around us. This does not mean that our world gives a false image of justice but, on the contrary, it better highlights the contrasts that exist between our ideal world and the real world. In this world, we speak of hope, sorrow and passion. The cinema is a window into our dreams and through which it is easier to recognize ourselves. Thanks to the knowledge and passion thus acquired, we transform life to the benefit of our dreams. The cinema seat is of greater assistance than the analyst’s couch. Sitting in a cinema seat we are left to our own devices and this is perhaps the only place where we are so bound to and yet so distant from each other: that is the miracle of cinema.