Abbas Kiarostami: Doors Without Keys

Story & photos by Allan Tong

Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami is opening a sublime photo exhibition of 50 life-sized doors on Nov. 21 at Toronto's Aga Khan Museum.

Yes, doors. Ancient doors. Wooden doors. Steel doors. Pelling doors. Padlocked doors. All locked, in fact. None with people opening or closing them. None identifying their locations. Doors Without Keys is as nameless and enigmatic as the renown photographer-filmmaker-poet intended.

I would add haunting and beautiful. Evocatively lighting their fading greens and reds, the doors demand a closer look. Notably, the detail on these images is amazing. You can see the grain of the wood behind the peeling paint. Others lie in mysterious shadow. For others, their chains and locks glisten in the sunlight.

Italian fest opens with biopic of Oriana Fallaci

by Allan Tong

This year's Italian Contemporary Film Festival (ICFF) opens Thursday night in Toronto and Vaughan with L'Oriana, a biopic about Oriana Fallaci, one of the most fearless and celebrated journalists of the 20th century.

The Florence-born Fallaci was known as a formidable interviewer, getting heavyweights such as Henry Kissinger to admit Vietnam was a "useless war" and having the gall to calls Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini a "tyrant" to his face.

Fallaci was a passionate personality who survived war zones and covered world politics with an intensity that this film, directed by Marco Turco, succeeds in capturing. Fallaci is a natural subject for the silver screen. Her words spring to life on screen and its through her words that her fiery intellect shines like a laser beam. Vittoria Puccini nicely balances Fallaci's ferocious drive and compassion.