24 Frames

24 Frames is the final film of Abbas Kiarostami, an Iranian film director.  Kiarostami, a film director, artist, and photographer melded cinema and photography into his final ode to cinema.  It was worked on and completed in 2016, however, it did not make it to Baltimore, MD, until June 2018.  I am not sure if this was because of editing reasons, or abilities to promote or obtain the film.  The premise behind this film, was to take 24 of his still frame photographs and animate them.  The idea seemed to be something right up my alley of different, and combining of art forms.  Each frame was roughly four and a half minutes, focusing on stark or bleak landscapes. 

Many of these frames were black and white landscapes.  Snow and water seemed to be central themes in the frames, and I am not sure if this was a thematic choice, or more based on the ease of animating these features.  Birds were also a regular theme, most commonly ravens or crows, which again, had me thinking if these were allusion to foreboding of death.  There were some cow scenes, and the two frames that the cows were used seemed to be pretty similar animated footage. 

The concept behind the film is creative and different, and while I can appreciate the stills for what they were, I felt some of the moments before and after what would be the normal stills to almost tamper with the simple beauty that was included in his photography.  Some of the frames, the four and a half minutes was enough, others it seemed like an eternity.

There was music included in some of the frames, and when included, I found those frames to be more of the ones that peaked my interest.  While the approach was to get the viewer to be more in the moment, some of the inclusions of animation was a bit too jilted, which made it a bit more of a challenge to be able to fully surrender to the scenes.

While I appreciated many of the water and snow frames, how some of them were spaced in the group was seamless.  It appeared to have some that transitioned well.  My only complaint with some of the use of birds, and animals in some of these scenes were a bit too surrealist for my taste (a cow sleeping on a beach for one, a wolf rolling in snow while others worked a carcass, a pigeon flying by a window after a group of crows passing by the same stark countryside view, a song bird singing for four and a half minutes as tree work comes to the two trees close by).  These images and animations at times seemed like an odd Dali painting in a moving photo, which was a bit too much for me to process as a viewer.  Some of these frames I think would have been more effective and achieved the same beauty in the moment effect if they were shorter.

The final frame, was the ideal climax pinnacle of the body of work, and tied the collection together well.  I'd be curious to know more about his work, and if any these started their journey in a Chelsea Gallery.