Kiarostami’s Cinematic Style through the Conversion from Analog to Digital

The photographic base of analog cinema ensures the indexical recording of moving objects. The sensitivity of film to light makes it bear the trace of the thing it represents. In the semiotic system an index is a sign produced by the thing it represents, therefore it might be identified through similarity. As a result, a photographic medium leads to realism’s concept, as Bazin’s analysis of Realism had been on the emphasis on the optical aspect of cinema, and on the spatial reception of the cinematic image through the years of 1970s. However, the material connection between object and image no longer exists, with the emergence of the digital technology and the conversion of recorded information into a numerical system. So, Cinema no longer involves the physical relation to time which had been ensured by its indexicality. This article discusses the impact of digital technology on directorial style of Abbas Kiarostami. Kiarostami is known for his contemplative style of filmmaking. The main issue in his body of work is to challenge the epistemological status of visual representation based on the medium and movement. Kiarostami is also known as a self- reflexive director with a self- conscious cinema, that is, he has a tendency to draw audiences’ attention to the cinematic apparatus and the codes of narrative cinema. This tendency leads his audience to detach from the historical reality of the profilmic events best known as a modernist gesture reminding of Brechtian Detachment in theatre. Kiarostami’s origin of reflexivity has been identified by Laura Mulvey with his Koker Trilogy. Journeys whether actual or metaphoric had always been a recurring narrative theme in Kiarostami’s oeuvre, from his first short film Bread and The Alley (1970) to Ahmad’s journey from Koker to Poshte in Where is my Friend’s House?   Kiarostami’s cinematic style, particularly the elongated tracking shots from a moving car is the result of his encounter with the earthquake aftermath. Kiarostami’s main concept is the gap between reality and a visual record of an actual historical event. And Life Goes On seeks to find a way to translate the tragic earthquake. Kiarostami keeps the spectator at distance because he believes that it is not reality. Reality was the moment when the earthquake happened and they were not there to film. This Brechtian detachment reminds the spectator that “the translation of reality involves distortion”. Therefore, Mulvey identifies Kiarostami’s cinematic style as cinema of Uncertainty since revealing the truth behind the process of production creates uncertainty. It could be inferred that the so called challenge led Kiarostami to a shift from Realism in Where is my Friend’s House to the Reflexivity in And Life Goes On. Now, the main issue to discuss is that how the conversion from analog to digital has affected the image’s reality in Kiarostami’s post- digital works. To sum up, reflections on ABC Africa (2001) and 10 (2002), in particular, illustrate moments of the new medium which offers practical ways of a directorial style transcending the distinct between subjectivity and objectivity.