Playing in Certified Copy: reality and fiction in the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami

• Grant number: 13/11816-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: September 01, 2013
• End date: August 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Cinema
• Principal Investigator: Cristian da Silva Borges
• Grantee: Alexandre Wahrhaftig
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The aim of the research is to explore the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, taking into account, as its main concern, the concept of "playing" and "game" as employed in his films, and particularly in Certified Copy (2010). The characters in that film have a ludic mobility inside the fiction universe, constantly reconfiguring the status of their relationship until it becomes impossible for the spectator to define precisely who those characters are and what the nature of their relationship implies: what we do know for sure is that they are playing a sort of game. By using the "playing" as a reflective procedure for his own cinema, Kiarostami complexifies, in Certified Copy, the double movement that his previous films had been performing through their formal structures decades before: on one hand, they focus on reality in its imanent ambiguity, and on the other, they expose the artificiality cinema imposes to that same reality. The game proposed by Certified Copy restructures and deepens Kiarostami's filmic logic. Thus, by exploring those concepts (game/ playing), related to those of realism and anti-ilusionism as suggested by the film's formal structures and themes, the research intends to determine the consequences of Certified Copy for the thinking of fiction and representation in cinema.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

WAHRHAFTIG, Alexandre. Tensioning fiction: Certified copy by Abbas Kiarostami. 2015. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA/SBD) São Paulo.