Tag Archives: Krzysztof Kieslowski

KIEŚLOWSKI AT THE EGYPTIAN

Apart from being a distinguished artist, Kieslowski had a striking moral authority. Both in his private and public life, he was known as an honest and straightforward man… He was all opposites: his love for others was covered by an outer harshness. This was because he was afraid of lies in public life: he was very severe and refused to compromise… Everything about his life was “clean”—all was transparent.Krzysztof Zanussi

The American Cinematheque’s SHORT SERIES ABOUT KRZYSZTOF KIEŚLOWSKI features a pair of double features and a Sunday triple-bill of the director’s valedictory TROIS COULEURS films.

The series opens with A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE and A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING—both 1988—the full-length versions of two of the filmmaker’s Decalogue episodes.

Friday night features a masterworks double bill: THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE (1991)—with Irène Jacob in a dual role—and BLIND CHANCE (1981), starring Bogusław Linda, and presented in its complete original form.

The series wraps on Sunday with the trilogy marathon BLUE (1993), WHITE (1994), and RED (1994), Kieślowski’s final features.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE and A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING

Thursday, September 5, at 7:30 pm.

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VÉRONIQUE and BLIND CHANCE

Friday, September 6, at 7:30 pm.

BLUE, WHITE, and RED

Sunday, September 8, at 5 pm.

Egyptian Theatre

6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Krzysztof Kieślowski, from top: Irène Jacob in The Double Life of Véronique; Grażyna Szapołowska in A Short Film About Love; Mirosław Baka in A Short Film About Killing; Bogusław Linda (left) in Blind Chance; Juliette Binoche in Blue; Julie Delpy in White; Jacob in Red. Images courtesy and © the filmmaker’s estate, the artists, the photographers, and the distributors.

COLCOA — MARGUERITE DURAS

“[Marguerite Duras] was a fascinating character… indomitable and tireless, who grabbed the world by the throat and said, ‘Look at me.’  But [she was] very intelligent, and able to think of many different strategies for dramatizing the basic facts of her life.” — Edmund White

Author of the autobiographical novel L’Amant, the screenplay Hiroshima mon amour (1959, for director Alain Resnais), and several diaries of the 1940s which play up her Resistance activities and play down her work with the Vichy regime, Duras was well known for telling a few stories many times, in many different ways.

Duras’ fictionalized “memoir of war” La douleur (written contemporaneously with the events it describes but not published until 1985, eleven years before her death) is the basis for a hallucinatory new film directed by Emmanuel Finkiel, a former assistant director for Jean-Luc Godard and Krzysztof Kieslowski.

LA DOULEUR / MEMOIR OF WAR stars Mélanie Thierry as Duras, and features Benoît Magimel, Benjamin Biolay, Shulamit Adar, and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet as “Morland” (the code name for François Mitterrand during the Resistance).

COLCOA presents the West Coast premiere of the film, followed by a conversation with the director.

 

LA DOULEUR / MEMOIR OF WAR

Tuesday, April 24, at 5:40 pm.

Directors Guild of America

7920 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.

Mélanie Thierry as Marguerite Duras in La Douleur / Memoir of War. Image credit: Music Box Films.