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THE COLORS
Kiarostami, Abbas. Colors (short film / visual essay)
THE COLORS
Abbas Kiarostami, 1976**
Color, in The Colors, is never introduced as something to be learned. What holds the film together is rhythm. Not as a stylistic choice, but as a way of structuring perception. The sequencing of images, their duration, the way they return all of it works to guide how you begin to see rather than what you are supposed to understand.
This approach is already fully present here, even though the film belongs to Kiarostami’s early period. Made while he was working at Kanoon, producing films for children, The Colors sits in a context that suggests instruction. Yet the film moves in the opposite direction. It doesn’t simplify. It doesn’t explain. Instead, it trusts that meaning can emerge on its own.
Seen from this distance, the film feels less like a starting point and more like a clear position. The elements that would later define Kiarostami’s work are already in place; repetition, observation, and a refusal to close things too quickly.
Leonard Freed A policewoman plays with local kids in Harlem. New York, USA. 1978. © Leonard Freed | Magnum Photos
“I don't like to give the viewer advice or teach him anything.”
-Abbas Kiarostami
“Children are very strong and independent characters and can come up with more interesting things than Marlon Brando, and it's sometimes very difficult to direct or order them to do something.”
- Abbas Kiarostami
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kiarostami, Abbas. Colors (short film / visual essay).
Kiarostami, Abbas. Lessons with Kiarostami. Tehran: Nazar Art Publication, 2006.
Kiarostami, Abbas. Walking with the Wind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Film Archive, 2001.
Godfrey, Mark. “Abbas Kiarostami: Image, Surface, and Thought.” Tate Papers.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Abbas Kiarostami and the Poetry of Cinema.”
Mulvey, Laura. Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image. London: Reaktion Books, 2006.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin, 1972.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge, 2012.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.