Movie fans,

This month, on Wednesdays at 6 pm at Catamount Arts, we are screening the three films that make up Abbas Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy. Last week was the first film, "Where is the Friend's House?" This week, on the 14th, we are screening the second film in the series, "And Life Goes On" (1992). And put the final film on your calendar too, "Through the Olive Trees" (1994) on the 21st.

If you missed the first film, never fear – "And Life Goes On" stands up just fine on its own. Unlike a trilogy that continues a story over three parts, Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy is one of place (set in and around Koker, a village in rural northern Iran) and one that explores the relationship between film/art and reality. It is set a few years after the first film and shortly after a very real devastating 1990 earthquake destroyed much of the region, including Koker. In a documentary style, the film follows a film director who is trying to get to Koker to find out if the boys who acted in his film "Where is the Friend's House?" survived, a fictionalization of a trip the real Kiarostami himself took immediately after the earthquake. Collapsing the differences between fiction and reality, what the film finds is beauty and resiliency and yes, life, in the midst of tragedy. In the self-reflexive mixing of fiction and documentary, the magic of cinema and the magic of the world become tangled together until there is no distinguishing between the two.

Kiarostami, who died 6 years ago, is widely regarded as one of the absolute giants in the world of modern cinema, forging a unique, poetic vision of cinema even while operating under the censorship of post-Islamic Revolution Iran. And not for nothing, but "And Life Goes On" is my personal favorite of the three films of his we are screening this month.

Hope to see you there!
Dr Pete