Abbas Kiarostami

[zedz]

In terms of business decisions, I think Criterion cares about getting yelled at by the thousands, not the dozens (as the response to the NYT article about black directors proves).

Also, there's a vast difference in ethical and publicity terms between a response of blacklisting a director and a response of discovering and promoting a whole lot of under-appreciated and under-exposed ones. Celebrating black filmmakers is not a controversial stance, except with bigots.

[Never Cursed]

Absolutely, I only used that as an example to illustrate the size of the contemptuous response that would affect such a company's decisions

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

Far be it from reality that a film that can be described as docufiction involving a child could possibly have a questionable moral background; further could it possibly be that "Film Twitter" – as people on here are so fond of vaguely labelling a diverse and heterogenous group of people whose only real ties are that they like movies and are on twitter (surely no one is claiming both Richard Brody and some A24 stan are cut of the same cloth) – are actually acting in what to them is good faith. The cattiness on here may masquerade as sophistication but as The Narrator Returns acutely points out, the rush to judgment comes from more than one side.

[swo17]

It's almost as though the correct answer is to have no opinion at all unless you're a direct party in this situation

[cdobbs]

Letterboxd has made its ruling: this is now an Akbari film, albeit with a new, jokey title: https://letterboxd.com/film/uncertified-copy/

[domino harvey]

That’s enough internet for me today, thanks

[diamonds]

Letterboxd has made its ruling: this is now an Akbari film, albeit with a new, jokey title: https://letterboxd.com/film/uncertified-copy/

Based on the edit history it looks like this is the result of one user changing the crowd-sourced TMDB entry from which Letterboxd pulls its data. Thankfully not an official ruling.

[Red Screamer]

From last month, an interview with Ten's Mania Akbari where she goes into detail about her side of the controversy. She doubles down on her claim that Ten was a filmed diary she made, with Kiarostami only editing it, and directly accuses him of raping her.

As I said before, without pretending to know what happened I still find the plagiarism claim confusing, beyond the fact that the stabalized camera set-up and well-recorded sound would seem to indicate professional intervention by someone at some point.
—According to Akbari, the behind-the-scenes footage shared by Ahamd Kiarostami depicts Kiarostami restaging scenes from the original footage, which Kiarostami wanted people to film in order to back up his false claims of authorship. She adds that one obvious piece of evidence for this is that in the behind-the-scenes footage she's not wearing the ring that she wears in the film. But she is wearing this ring in the footage.
—Akbari says everything she shot for Ten was diary/documentary footage intended solely for personal use, but she also makes references to multiple people performing, insisting that her sister played the character of the sex worker, for one.
—She mentions Kiarostami costuming her and filming her for an insert shot. An elaboration on this point is hidden away in the interview's footnotes:

Mania points out that Kiarostami was not present in the filming of the footage that has been used in the editing of the film. She maintains that Kiarostami shot only three scenes: The one with Kamran Adl (the person who plays the child’s father); the shot where the sex worker gets out of the car; and the shot where the ‘religious woman’ leaves the car. All other footage, Mania states, was shot by herself with her small camera, in the sole presence of her friends and family. She says that Kiarostami shot some additional footage but that none of it was used in the film.

—If Ten was filmed with only one camera, are the shot-reverse shots in the film a complete fabrication of Kiarostami's editing, the result of scenes staged multiple times, or a fusion of documentary and fictional footage?

I hope more information comes out which clears up the situation, though given the small scale of the production that might be unlikely. Obviously, the accusation of rape is much more serious but I don't have anything to add to that besides the fact that I hope this thread doesn't fall back into rote complaining about cancel culture like it did last time.

[pistolwink]

—If Ten was filmed with only one camera, are the shot-reverse shots in the film a complete fabrication of Kiarostami's editing, the result of scenes staged multiple times, or a fusion of documentary and fictional footage?

This is how numerous of his films were shot. Life and Nothing More, Through the Olive Trees, Taste of Cherry... all feature abundant shot/reverse shot either between two people sitting in a car or one person sitting in a car and another outside. In most cases, the conversations were "synthetic," that is, Kiarostami filmed one side of the conversation without the other performer present (and often, Kiarostami himself substituting for him/her as the unheard offscreen interlocutor), and then filmed the other side in the same way. This is, or was, a big part of his "method" long before Ten.

I don't know what if anything this says about Mania Akbari's claims but I thought it was worth pointing out.