TEHRAN-On the occasion of the 84th birth anniversary of the late Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (June 22, 1940 - July 4, 2016), the Silk Road film club of the Franco-Iranian Center in Paris, France, will hold a commemoration ceremony for the globally-renowned director at Cinema Balzac in Paris on June 16.

During the event, “The Taste of Cherry,” the masterpiece of the director, which won the Palme d’Or of the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, will be screened, Mehr reported.

There will also be three speakers at the event including Seifollah Samadian, Nahal Tajadod, and Jean-Claude Voisin.

A famous Iranian photographer and filmmaker, Samadian was a close collaborator of Kiarostami, and director of the feature documentary “76 minutes and 15 seconds” (2016), which was made in homage to the great filmmaker.

Tajadod is a famous Franco-Iranian writer and translator of Kiarostami's collections of poems “With the Wind” (2002).

Voisin is a writer, historian, and archaeologist, who was the former director of the French Institute of Tehran.

Written, directed, and produced by Kiarostami, “The Taste of Cherry” is a film to appreciate life in a delicate way based on Iranian values.

It follows the enigmatic Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) as he drives around the hilly outskirts of Tehran looking for someone who will agree to bury him after he commits suicide. Extended conversations with three passengers (a soldier, a seminarian, and a taxidermist) elicit different views on mortality and individual choice. Operating at once as a closely observed, realistic story and a fable populated by archetypal figures, the film challenges viewers to consider what often goes unexamined in everyday life.

Since the film's release, multiple other critics have also declared it a masterpiece; in the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound poll, six critics and two directors named it one of the 10 best films ever made. “Taste of Cherry” was also named the 9th best film of the 90s by Slant Magazine.

Kiarostami was a film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, he was involved in the production of over 40 films, including shorts and documentaries. He attained critical acclaim for directing “Close-Up” (1990), “The Wind Will Carry Us” (1999), and “Taste of Cherry” (1997). In later works, “Certified Copy” (2010) and “Like Someone in Love” (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively.

He was part of a generation of filmmakers in the Iranian New Wave, a Persian cinema movement that started in the late 1960s and emphasized the use of poetic dialogue and allegorical storytelling dealing with philosophical issues. He is known for his use of Persian poetry in the dialogue, titles, and themes of his films. His films also contain a notable degree of ambiguity, an unusual mixture of simplicity and complexity, and often a mix of fictional and documentary elements. The concepts of change and continuity, in addition to the themes of life and death, play a major role in Kiarostami's works.

The Franco-Iranian Center was created in 2016, to deepen and develop Franco-Iranian relations in all areas (institutional, economic and commercial, cultural and artistic, sporting, academic, etc.) and work to strengthen ties of friendship between the two peoples of France and Iran, and the two countries.

SS/SAB