Shirin

[antnield]

October 26th - no extras listed yet by any of the retailers that I can see.

(This may have already been mentioned in the Kiarostami thread.)

[MichaelB]

Full specs announced:

Shirin
A film by Abbas Kiarostami

Widely regarded as one of the most important, ambitious and rewarding filmmakers at work today, Kiarostami continues to explore the potential of cinema, stimulating and challenging the viewer’s imagination to an extraordinary degree. Shirin is a re-telling of a classic Persian love story.

Following its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and its nationwide theatrical release by the BFI in June 2009, Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin is now released on BFI DVD.

What Shirin shows us – and indeed all it shows us – is an audience of more than 100 women who are deeply absorbed in watching a film we never see. We observe instead how the drama plays out on the faces of the audience, seen in close-up, mostly one at a time, illuminated by the flickering light of the screen. It is a mesmerising series of portraits of women young and old, many of them strikingly beautiful, their expressions variously wistful, quizzical, amused, enraptured and distraught. Also helping us to reconstruct the tale for ourselves are the unseen film’s impassioned narration, dramatic dialogue, romantic, doom-laden score, and richly evocative sound effects.

Although Shirin creates a strong illusion of real women watching a real film, the audience is in fact made up of well-known Iranian actresses (plus Juliette Binoche who happened to be there when filming was taking place and who will star in Kiarostami’s next film). Reportedly, the entire film was shot in Kiarostami’s living room, with the women looking only at a blank screen while imagining their own love stories, and the Shirin narration was decided upon only after Kiarostami had finished filming.

Special features
• Taste of Shirin (2008) - Hamideh Razavi’s documentary on the making of Shirin;
• Illustrated booklet containing essays and credits

Release date: 26 October 2009
RRP: £19.99 / cat. no. BFIVD848 / cert PG
Iran / 2008 / colour / 91 mins + 27 mins extra material / Farsi with optional English subtitles / DVD9 / ratio 1.78:1 (16x9 anamorphic widescreen)

[Rich Malloy]

I hope this doesn't come off as caddish, but is there anything in this world more awesomely sensual than the play of emotions on the face of a Persian woman?

Now, onto the more high-minded discussion... O:)

[Sanjuro]

Is this just DVD or is there a Blu-Ray coming too?

[ellipsis7]

Michael, can you clarify? - there's a SHIRIN Blu-Ray on Amazon apparently available now via a marketplace seller here... Is this a BFI Blu?...

[Fierias]

and is there a reason it hasn't shown up on amazon yet (officially)? would love to preorder it already. The only place I can find it online is Play.com and they don't ship to me.

[MichaelB]

I now have a final production version, and can confirm that the booklet is 20 pages.

1-5: 'Kiarostami and the Art of the Invisible' by Geoff Andrew;
7-12: 'Shirin: womanhood carried through centuries' by Fatemeh Keshavarz;
13-15: Full credits for Shirin
16: Full credits for Taste of Shirin
17: Acknowledgements

...plus some gorgeous colour reproductions of classical Persian art.

[ellipsis7]

Superb - can't wait!...

[Cash Flagg]

Finally up on Amazon, no Blu-ray.

[zone_resident]

Beaver

[ellipsis7]

Have SHIRIN now. Simply a superb DVD package of a marvellous magisterial uniquely original film!...

EDIT: Just put this up on the projector... Great anamorphic picture, however surprisingly is pictureboxed/underscanned on the feature - have to use a degree of 'overscan' adjustment to fit to screen, fine on widescreen TV monitor however, no need to adjust there (obviously compensated by TV cutoff)...

[colinr0380]

An excellent Dialogue About Shirin between Jonathan Rosenbaum and Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa.

And there is also this comment:

More recently, we’ve recorded a commentary for the DVD of Close-Up that Criterion is preparing.

[ellipsis7]

Interesting piece, although similar in approach to their book, in which the two handed approach is a strength as well as a weakness - if an area is of interest to neither it is bypassed/omitted, so together they tend to unevenly cover the material, it sparkles sometimes but ultimately slightly unsatisfactory...

Also they haven't obviously seen the extra documentary on the BFI disc - Taste of Shirin - where the production methodology is revealed... Has an important bearing on the feature thenceforward...

It's perhaps worth noting that the audio is a sophisticated Dolby Surround 'radio play' of the SHIRIN, adapted and dramatised specially for the film, and including a full and fullsome orchestral score (which noone seems to mention) of slightly uncertain (to me) providence (I say this because AK often uses extradiegetic Western music, but this isn't immediately recognisable, so may be an original Iranian score)...

If the visuals are closeups of minimalist expressions on the human face, the audio appears a more effusive classical rendering... There is also a hidden displacement in that in reality the pictured actors are neither watching or listening to the SHIRIN drama - that is a conceit engineered by Kiarostami...

This is a fascinating and possibly very great film, exploring fundamental Aristotleian mimesis, a counterpoint to the multiplex mebabuck megastory movie, and possibly contains indications for a way forward for cinema itself beyond post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-classicism into a purer richer deeper juxtaposition of modernist minimalism and a new classicism...

[Will Barks]

Is there a possibility that this will come out on Blu-ray in the near future? I don't want to double dip...

[MichaelB]

DVD Times.

[Cash Flagg]

Finally up on Amazon, no Blu-ray.

And now (temporarily I assume?) unavailable.

[Angela]

Finally up on Amazon, no Blu-ray.

And now (temporarily I assume?) unavailable.

I ordered a copy at MovieMail. (I hope it's OK to post a link to a retailer here?)