We continue our exploration of the joy and wonders of children’s films as part of Le Petit Cinéma Club.

The celebrated Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami began his career making films for children — many of which are collected in this wonderful program on the Criterion Channel. A graduate from the University of Tehran School of Fine Arts, Kiarostami joined the filmmaking department of Kanoon (The Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults) in 1969. Throughout the two decades he worked there — during which he made this week’s film selection, the delightful and energetic The Colors — what started as “just a job” turned out to make him “an artist.”

The Colors was the seventh film Kiarostami made for Kanoon, and it called upon his previous experience directing around 150 television commercials between 1962 and 1966. The film’s propulsive rhythm, which he deemed necessary to entertain children, recalls his finesse as a director of commercials, while the film’s emphasis on form and color anticipates the distinct visual language he developed in works such as The Koker Trilogy.

“I knew that children really like rhythm. If you want kids to see a film you have to have rhythm in it.” ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

There is a pedagogical function tucked inside the dazzling flurries of The Colors. Loosely charting a child’s walk home, the film elucidates the colors of stoplights and crosswalks through a series of whimsical montages — “red” is associated with “radishes” and “roses,” while “green” is linked to “spring plums” and “the meadow.” These associative color games are accompanied by a bubbly soundtrack from Kiarostami’s frequent collaborator Changiz Sayad whose high-pitched chimes match the charms of his director’s poetic language.

Abbas Kiarostami (1940 – 2016) was a pioneering Iranian filmmaker whose multifaceted career saw him experiment with non-fiction and fiction filmmaking, make films across the globe, and work within both the theatrical and gallery setting. He earned major awards at Cannes, Locarno, Venice, and many other film festivals across his illustrious career. When he passed, the essayist Phillip Lopate wrote, “He was, to my mind, not simply the greatest Iranian filmmaker but of the two or three greatest filmmakers alive (and now I have to amend that last word).”

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Criterion and MK2.