Kanoon: From Didactic to Poetic, 1974-77

A suite of films produced by Kanoon, the celebrated government agency that brought culture and literacy to children and young adults in Iran.

The series starts with Abbas Kiarostami’s short films about education and educators. “Try to imagine Laurel and Hardy directed by Robert Bresson,” wrote critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, describing Two Solutions for One Problem, a charming slapstick about tolerance and civility. Originally titled Teachers: A Few Sketches and Memories and commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Tribute to the Teachers is a series of nuanced, touching interviews with schoolteachers. In Solution No. 1, a driver has to deal with a flat tyre on top of the Alborz Mountain, precisely the sort of literal and metaphorical conundrum that the engineer in Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) must face. Amir Naderi, who collaborated with Kiarostami as a screenwriter, made his second Kanoon film, Waiting, about a southern boy who falls for a girl, though he’s only seen her hands. Showing Naderi at the peak of his purely visual storytelling, this nearly silent film shows how the former photographer used his keen visual aesthetic to tell impressionistic stories of repression and rebellion. Films in this package: Two Solutions for One Problem (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1975), Tribute to the Teachers (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1977), Solution No. 1 (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1978) and Waiting (dir. Amir Naderi, 1974).