A film about a film about ...
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Your support makes all the difference.`Close Up' is screened with Nanni Moretti's short film `The First Day of the Premiere of Close-Up'. The director of `Dear Diary' talks about Kiarostami and the travails of opening `Close-Up' at his cinema, the Nuovo Sacher, in Rome.
In my short film I wanted not only to pay homage to the cinema of Kiarostami but also to the people who release Close-Up in cinemas. I think that much of the power of Close-Up comes from the main character who's not an actor, but is a representation of the real person and the power that the cinema has over this man. This is the right moment for Kiarostami's cinema. Although it looks very simple initially, it is very sophisticated and it's very difficult to accomplish such simplicity. The deeper level is that it's often a reflection on cinema itself.
We started the Nuovo Sacher six years ago but there isn't really any more space now for a different kind of cinema. I don't want to say that I want to educate the public but it's important to form a public in such a way that a relationship can be created between them and the cinema. I think that a part of the Roman audience trusts my choice and would go and see a film if it was programmed at the Nuovo Sacher, even if if they don't know the director. Every July, the Nuovo Sacher runs a short film festival. For the first festival I received this video tape called The Little Brother. The main character was pretending to be my little brother who wanted to be a film-maker too but couldn't because he had this big brother. That's as close as I've got to being impersonated, like Makhmalbaf is in Close-Up.
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