Programme

Feature Film

Where Is the Friend’s House?

• Director(s): Abbas Kiarostami
• Cast: Babak Ahmadpour, Ahmed Ahmadpour, Khodabakhsh Defai, Iran Outari
• Country, year: Iran, 1987
• Duration: 83 mins
• Language: Persian with EN subtitles
• More information: Colour

The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing trilogy of films set in the northern Iranian village of Koker takes a premise of fable-like simplicity—a boy searches for the home of his classmate whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous, child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. Shot through with all the wonder, beauty, tension, and mystery one day can contain. Where is the Friend’s House? established Kiarostami’s reputation as one of cinema’s most sensitive and profound humanists.

Short Films

Kiri (A Tree in the Fog)

• Director(s): Takahiko Iimura
• Country, year: Japan, 1970
• Duration: 5 mins
• More information: b&w, silent

Experimental filmmaker Takahiko Iimura is filming almost entirely white scenes in which faintly seen trees are restlessly blown by wind through fog and then suddenly dissolve into a pure white, like in San-Sui-Ga white landscape drawings.

Hands

• Director(s): Stella F. Simon and Miklós Bándy
• Country, year: Germany, 1928
• Duration: 13 mins
• Language: German intertitles with EN subtitles
• More information: b&w

Conceived by the American photographer Stella F. Simon (1878-1973) and directed by the Hungarian-born journalist and writer Miklós Bándy (1904-1971), this short film inspired by dance is notable for its use of hands to evoke the characters. Set against abstract constructivist backdrops, the hands undulate, collide and sometimes overlap to better grasp each other. Without dialogue, this abstract ballet seems to lead to a reflection on bodies relating to each other.

Plaisirs d’Amour en Iran

• Director(s): Agnès Varda
• Cast: Valérie Mairesse, Ali Rafie, Thérèse Liotard
• Country, year: Isafahan, 1976
• Language: French with EN subtitles
• Duration: 6 mins
• More information: Colour

An Iranian man and a French woman stroll around the city of Isfahan, Iran. Blending documentary and fiction. Varda presents a reflection on human relationships. Visual architectural details of Persian architecture become a vehicle for poetic expressions with humour and detachment.