This podcast focuses on the Eclipse Series, Blu-ray 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 four films (Colors, Bread and Alley, Breaktime, and The Traveler) from Eclipse Series 47: Abbas Kiarostami – Early Shorts and Features. Thirteen other films included in this set will be covered in future 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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Episode Links

Abbas Kiarostami

• 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

Box Set Reviews

• Blu-ray.com


• Under the Radar

Colors

• The Criterion Collection


• The Criterion Channel


• Wikipedia


• Letterboxd


• Le Cinema Club

Bread and Alley

• The Criterion Collection


• The Criterion Channel


• Wikipedia


• Letterboxd


• High on Films


• An Awadh Boy’s Panorama

Breaktime

• The Criterion Collection


• The Criterion Channel


• Letterboxd


• Sabzian

The Traveler

• The Criterion Collection


• The Criterion Channel


• Wikipedia


• Letterboxd


• In Review Online


• Senses of Cinema

Contact us

• David Blakeslee ( TikTok / YouTube / Facebook / CriterionCast / Blog )


• Trevor Berrett ( Instagram / Website / The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast )