Opera Chic

Juliette's Tears For Jafar Panahi

 
Film and opera director Abbas Kiarostami earlier today in Cannes spoke out for his friend and colleague and fellow director Jafar Panahi, imprisoned in Iran since March. The reason behind his arrest, his alleged attempt to make a movie about last year's contested Iranian elections.

Reality intruded harshly on the Croisette today: it has been revealed that Panahi is now on a hunger strike, and actress Juliette Binoche could not hold back tears at the press conference. Kiarostami (who has been in the past, by the way, denied access to the US on "security reasons") called Panahi's arrest "an attack on art", and one prays that very soon Binoche's tears will not be necessary, that reason will prevail and Panahi's captors will release him before tragedy occurs, and he will be as free to walk the streets as we all are today.

Let's (Not) Get Lost: Abbas Kiarostami On Directing Opera

Abbas Kiarostami, that glum, most humane genius of cinema (Opera Chic's personal favorite of his: "10"), would like to direct another opera after his debut in "Cosi Fan Tutte", he told the "Financial Times":

“But [the opera] is a matter of portraying emotions. And how can we relate to those emotions if we forget about ourselves? How can we even pretend that we can ever forget about ourselves? Maybe we wish it, because then time would disappear, and we would be frozen and never get old. But even when we sleep and dream, our lives are going on. We never truly forget about ourselves.”

He's thinking of "Don Giovanni"; Opera Chic would love to see him take a crack at La Clemenza di Tito instead.

The Plot Against America: Kiarostami's Così Fan Tutte Opens On Fourth Of July

Please don't tell Stephen Colbert that an Iranian who, suspiciously, always wears sunglasses and has been denied in the past a visa to the USA went to France to direct a show about marital infidelity and Albanians written by a Jewish heretic/Catholic priest obsessed by sex and by an Austrian kid obsessed by p00p.

Axis of Evil director Abbas Kiarostami's Così Fan Tutte opens on July 4 in Aix-En-Provence: and Opera Chic has the photos from this highly anti-American initiative (Kiarostami has in the past been denied acces to the US for security reasons, something that, for example, has never happened to that Saudi princess who kept wiring money to the 9/11 hijackers in the months before the attacks). All of us 25 American fans of Kiarostami will be disappointed that his staging does NOT take place entirely in a moving car.

Kiarostami Fan Tutte: Iranian Maestro Of Cinema Debuts As Opera Director

Props to le directeur général du Festival d'Aix, Bernard Foccroulle: his Aix En Provence festival has hired Abbas Kiarostami as director for Così Fan Tutte this coming july (in a co-production with ENO): the humanist maestro of cinema (and awesome photographer) has told France presse news agency that "at the first meeting I said no, that I was not worthy. But then Bernard has convinced me... it's an immense pleasure".