 At the turn of 21st century Kiarostami decided to change from 35 mm film production to digital video . The first film where he used this technology was ABC Africa , which was compiled from footage shot with two small digital video cameras , material originally gathered for the purposes of research and scouting . Referring to digital cinema Kiarostami said : " Digital video is within the reach of anybody , like a <unk> pen . I 'd even dare to predict that within the next decade , we 'll see a burst of interest in film @-@ making as a consequence of the impact of video " . Kiarostami stated about the documentary ABC Africa that " directing was spontaneously and unconsciously eliminated , by which I mean artificial and conventional directing . " 
