The Eclipse Viewer – Episode 66 – Abbas Kiarostami: Early Shorts and Features [Part 3]

This podcast focuses on the Eclipse Series, box set editions of lost, forgotten, or overshadowed films recently revived by the Criterion Collection. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each set and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss five films (Solution No. 1, First Case/Second Case, The Chorus, Fellow Citizen, and First Graders) from Eclipse Series 47: Abbas Kiarostami – Early Shorts and Features. Thirteen other films included in this set are covered in other episodes.

About the films:

Long before he became one of the most renowned artists in world cinema, the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career at Tehran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (a.k.a. Kanoon), where he honed his distinctive style and themes. During his first decades as a filmmaker, Kiarostami moved freely among documentary, narrative, and even animation, and between joyous short films made for children and subtle works exploring the struggles of adolescents. Often using the classroom as a laboratory, he probed social and political tensions in Iranian society during the turbulent years before and after the 1979 revolution. Spanning his very first short, Bread and Alley (which the director called the “mother of all my films”); other underseen early revelations, like Experience and The Traveler; and nonfiction masterpieces such as Homework, the graceful, warm, and playful works collected here find moments of transcendent poetry within everyday life, and use deceptively simple premises to express universal truths about the human condition.

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• The Criterion Collection
• The Criterion Channel
• Abbas Kiarostami’s Childhood Films (Criterion Channel documentary short, suggested viewing mentioned on inside cover of the set)
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• The American Scholar
• British Journal of Photography
• Harper’s
• The Point
• Senses of Cinema
• ShotDeck
• Sight & Sound
• Criterion – In Memoriam

• Blu-ray.com
• Home Theater Forum
• Let’s Talk Criterion (video)
• Under the Radar

• The Criterion Collection
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami.org
• Notes on Cinematograph

• The Criterion Collection
• The Criterion Channel
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami.org
• Notes on Cinematograph
• Webs of Significance

• The Criterion Collection
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami.org
• Notes on Cinematograph
• Asian Movie Pulse

• The Criterion Collection
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami.org
• Senses of Cinema
• Pierre Henry’s “Psyche Rock” (featured in soundtrack, mentioned in episode):

• The Criterion Collection
• The Criterion Channel
• Wikipedia
• Letterboxd
• Kiarostami.org
• Notes on Cinematograph
• Filmofiles Hideout

• David Blakeslee ( TikTok / YouTube / Facebook / CriterionCast / Blog )
• Trevor Berrett ( Instagram / Website / The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast )