Farhadi Workshop in Kustendorf Film Festival

Human Relations Core of Cinema: Asghar Farhadi Workshop

Following the screening of his latest feature film, The Past, in the crammed main theater, the award-winning Iranian filmmaker, Asghar Farhadi, held a workshop, revealing the process of his filmmaking to an eager and engaging audience. Farhadi spoke about his early work in the theater where he was getting a great deal of plays from which he learned much about human relations.
Explaining the way he elaborated his characters, Farhadi stressed the importance of going beyond the black and white ideas of good and evil.

When you watch my films, I don’t want you to say: ‘This character is guilty’. Everybody has good reasons why they are doing something.

When asked to give advice to young filmmakers, Farhadi was succinct:

Forget festivals and forget critics. Shoot what is inside you. When I write I don’t think about audience. The first audience is me.

However, he warned that this process of discovering what is close to one’s heart takes time.

I always make films from my memory; I try to take ideas from things close to me. It’s better if we take ideas from people near us. For example, the image of a man washing his father in a bathtub is taken from an image of my grandfather. If you make an honest film, everyone will come to you.

Answering a question about tradition and family values in cinema, Farhadi said that family situations are very rich, layered situations, situations in which many perspectives are to be found.

Family is like a foundation of films. Ibsen did it and Williams did it. There also important family relations in antiquity, for example in Antigone. It’s all about family.

One of the most interesting questions was about how the filmmaker worked with children as a good part of the film is seen from a child’s perspective. Farhadi explained that children do not believe adults and sometimes we to need trick them to get the best out of them.

Revealing an insider’s view into process of filmmaking, Farhadi spoke about the way he rehearses before shooting. Building personal ties between actors before shooting was particularly important, Farhadi noted, but also about not telling his actors everything, especially not the children, because “they do not believe us”. He stressed the importance of the uncanny in cinema.

People do something first and then they think about what they did or what they are doing. This is what I want my characters to behave like…People talk a lot about themselves but in the end they do not understand each other. Like in that sequence in at the beginning of the film when two characters see each other after a long time and try to speak each other through a glass.

When asked about trends in current mainstream cinema, Farhadi observed a problem:

Filmmakers think films like this are too much for the audience. So they have clear cut characters and clearly defined formula. And then films change the taste of the audience.

As expected, political questions were also asked, but cinema issues prevailed.

There is censorship in every country. There is censorship in my country, but in America, there is censorship with money. They pay you and tell you what to do.

When asked about why his characters look at each other in a particular, Farhadi replied:

When two people love each other, they don’t say anything. They just look at each other. If one person says: ‘I love you’, you know there is something wrong.

 Source: http://kustendorf-filmandmusicfestival.org/2014/human-relations-core-of-cinema-asghar-farhadi-workshop/