Kiarostami to Get Kurosawa Award
S.F. Film Festival honoring Iranian filmmaker
Thursday, March 9, 2000
Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami will receive this year's Akira Kurosawa
Award, presented for lifetime achievement by the San Francisco International
Film Festival.
Kiarostami, 59, will come to San Francisco from Tehran for the award
ceremony and the U.S. premiere of his latest film, ``The Wind Will Carry
Us,'' on April 30 at the AMC Kabuki Theatres.
Peter Scarlet, artistic director of the festival, said there will also
be a retrospective of four other Kiarostami works, which for many will
serve as an introduction to his films.
Only one of the humanist director's films has received commercial distribution
in the United States. ``A Taste of Cherry,'' about a man who wants to die
and is looking for someone to bury him, won the Golden Palm award at the
Cannes Film Festival in 1997 and was shown in San Francisco the following
year.
Kiarostami has been making films since the early 1970s, many of them
with children as subjects. The retrospective will feature ``The Traveller,''
about a young soccer fan; ``Where Is the Friend's Home,'' about a student;
and ``And Life Goes On,'' about the search for two children after an earthquake.
A film with an adult protagonist, ``Close Up,'' about a man who impersonates
a film director, brought Kiarosta mi international attention in the early
'90s.
The Kurosawa Award is named for Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, who
was the first recipient in 1986.
FILM FESTIVAL
THE 43RD ANNUAL SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL will be held
April 20-May 4 at the Kabuki 8 and Castro theaters in San Francisco. Other
screenings will be at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, the Park Theatre
in Menlo Park and the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. Advance ticket
packages went on sale yesterday. Individual tickets go on sale March 28
to San Francisco Film Society members and on April 2 to the public. For
ticket information, call (510) 601-8932 or visit www.sffs.org.
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