Close-Up Leading Lights

One cannot talk about the subtle integration of documentary and fiction without being indebted to Abbas Kiarostami and, in particular, Close-Up. The film follows Hossein Sabzian, a cinephile who impersonates the famous director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and convinces a family that he is preparing to make a film in which they will appear. When his deception is discovered, Hossein is arrested and put on trial for fraud. As the English-language poster reads: “A real life situation, based on a real incident, in actual locations, with actual people involved.” Kiarostami asks what it means for something to be “real” on screen, while simultaneously producing an undeniable feeling of realism.

Some of my greatest moments of inspiration as a filmmaker have come from films that completely shatter the illusion of authenticity we’ve come to expect from not only fiction, but also the documentary form. I see both modes of filmmaking as simply means to an end: ways of constructing a finely crafted experience for the audience. To acknowledge that what is being watched is in fact a construction, but does that make it any less ‘real’ or ‘true’? I think about this question a lot, and it has been at the heart of my work for a number of years now.

With Blue Heron, I finally had a palette large enough to more fully explore that question through a narrative construction. By the end, I myself had to confront the limitations of the form itself. What a wonderful, devastating, and artistically complicated outcome, which Close-Up certainly lays the groundwork for.

Sophy Romvari, Leading Lights Guest Programmer