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The film-maker is renowned as an artist who stayed in Iran after the Islamic revolution of 1979, when others fled abroad. As his new film premieres in Edinburgh, he talks to Maya JaggiAbbas Kiarostami was about to celebrate his 50th birthday when the earthquake of 1990 hit northern Iran. He drove with his son from the capital, Tehran, to the devastated region, where he had recently filmed Where Is the Friend's House?, an acutely observed moral tale about a boy striving to return an exercise book to a classmate to save him from punishment. The feature won him acclaim at the Locarno film festival in 1989. 'Travelling in the area touched me deeply,' he says. 'I had such a close and profound experience of death that it changed my work in an optimistic way.'After completing And Life Goes On and Through the Olive Trees, two more films set around the earthquake-devastated village of Koker which, together, are often seen as his masterpiece, in 1997 he made Taste of Cherry, in which a man deter

Christopher Tayler gets to the heart of Chuck Palahniuk's latest satire on American cultureChuck Palahniuk is one of those writers who get punished by critics for making them feel embarrassed about the eagerness with which their adolescent selves might have joined the writer's fan base. Fight Club, his first novel, published in 1996, made him famous when the film version came out three years later, and it could serve in a time capsule as a handy shorthand for a whole range of 90s pop-cultural 'dissent', from Rage Against the Machine's first album to Adbusters magazine. His interest in male thwartedness is equally 90s in its colouring, though his homoeroticism and sex-and-violence material also put him somewhere in the grand tradition of William Burroughs and Dennis Cooper. No one could accuse him of being over-subtle - his later novels have such titles as Choke, Snuff and Rant - but there's something likeably direct and single-minded about his desire to speak to, and for, the confused

There are many actresses in Bollywood who at least once had gone without make-up or going to appear de-glam in their films to look natural on-screen. If Priyanka Chopra has gone with minimal make-u...

'It's overwhelming,' Michael Douglas said about receiving a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.

Brillante Mendoza's film ) is so grim and gruesome that it didn't even divide audiences and critics when it screened at Cannes last month; it united them in hatred and disgust. Shot on film and video, the Philippine director's latest offering is about a young police cadet who finds himself participating in the grisly murder of a prostitute. Stark and unrelenting, it presents torture, rape and mutilation in a manner reminiscent of snuff movies. Viewers booed it and reviewers described it as 'horrible'; the American critic Roger Ebert pronounced it the worst film ever to screen at the festival.

TV News: Increase puts pressure on other provinces -- The Quebec government has increased its film and TV tax credit from 25% of labor expenses to 25% of the overall budget of films and TV shows shot in the Canadian province, it was announced Friday.

Matt Damon is being linked to the role of cyclist Lance Armstrong in a new film biopic.

guardian.co.ukHollywood, Bollywood meet Bradford: "City of Film"Reuters India, IndiaBy Paul Lauener LONDON (Reuters) - Bradford, an industrial city in the north of England, has been named the world's first "City of Film" by the United Nations, ahead of more immediately famous movie capitals such as Hollywood or Cannes. ...Forget Cannes... Bradford is named as first City of Film Telegraph.co.ukBradford wins Unesco City of Film award guardian.co.ukBradford's 'city of film' honour BBC Newsall 165 news articles

Film News: Obama era reignites stars' fervor for lobbying -- One Monday afternoon in early March, MSNBC cut to a live shot inside the Capitol, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stood before a row of media cameras and introduced 'a real hero for the people of New Orleans and a real model for the country.'

Film News: 'Deckchair' director says he can't take credit for idea -- Keen watchers of Aussie films have been noting the similarities between Pixar's new animated laffer 'Up' and the 2003 romantic comedy 'Danny Deckchair,' released by Fox.