kochi while digital innovations in cinema have delivered aweinspiring visual experiences and added to its popularity award winning documentarian and film critic neelan said the flawless filmmaking of auteurs like abbas kiarostami transcended the limitations of the mediumdelivering a talk on the iconic iranian directors taste of cherry on the sidelines of the ongoing signs short and documentary film festival today neelan critically examined themes and techniques in the 1997 minimalist classic to underscore the primacy of storytellingthe lecture as also the 2013 farsienglish production abbas kiarostami a report by bahman maghsoudlou was presented to cinephiles at ernakulam town hall today as homage to the late director who passed away in julydespite working with several constraints including limited technology and blunt censorship kiarostami remained within the laws of the land to make movies without being deemed a rebel by the authorities neelan saidthe symbolism in taste of cherry about a driver on the hunt for passengers to kill him is found in its profound visual metaphors and contemplative silences broken only by the spare dialogue and ambient soundsneelan highlighted major sequences of the movie to buttress a point about the importance of consciouslyused sounds as a method to communicate the messagesounds were given as equal importance as images in kiarostomis movies in taste of cherry he used the sounds even to detach the viewer from getting too empathetic to the protagonist he saidkiarostami famously toed a thin line between fiction and reality in his filmmaking while some of his footage was shot in the style of a documentary others were semiscripted or directed scenesthe line between fact and fiction has been further blurred by digitisation neelan saiddigitisation has made cinema more democratic and costeffective the technical part to making movies is more userfriendly than earlier he said however we have lost the visual experience as people have started watching movies even in their mobile phones