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Fri-Thu, Sep 2-8

Three Colors Trilogy

Three Colors Trilogy

This boldly cinematic trio of stories about love and loss from Krzysztof Kieślowski was a defining event of the art-house boom of the 1990s. The films are named for the colors of the French flag and stand for the tenets of the French Revolution — liberty, equality, and fraternity — but that hardly begins to explain their enigmatic beauty and rich humanity. Set in Paris, Warsaw and Geneva, and ranging from tragedy to comedy, the Three Colors trilogy (Kieślowski’s final work) examines with artistic clarity a group of ambiguously interconnected people experiencing profound personal disruptions. Marked by intoxicating cinematography and stirring performances by such actors as Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Irène Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant, Kieślowski’s Three Colors is a benchmark of contemporary cinema.

“Life is disorderly, but sometimes it happens that we come across an internal fusion that consolidates, makes it into a whole, a world reflected in a drop of water. And suddenly, in one piece of time, you see an awful lot of life and you understand a lot despite it being about a seemingly unimportant trifle.” —Kryzstof Kieślowski

“[Kieślowski] deserves to be named with, like Bergman, Ozu, Fellini, Keaton and Bunuel. He is one of the filmmakers I would turn to for consolation if I learned I was dying, or to laugh with on finding I would live after all.” —Roger Ebert

“An operatic triptych, a dramatic cine-poem of intense strangeness, indulgent and confident, set somewhere which looks like the real world, but isn’t.” —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“A monumental work of tremendous formal, moral, and dramatic sophistication.” —Dave Kher, Film Comment

“...More Real than reality itself.” —Slavoj Žižek

“[Kieślowski] used light and shadow to explore the truth about man.”  —Józef Tischner

Past Screenings

THREE COLORS: BLUE
Fri, Sep 2 | Tue, Sep 6

THREE COLORS: BLUE

In the first film of the Three Colors trilogy, Juliette Binoche gives a tour de force performance as Julie, a woman reeling from the tragic death of her husband and young daughter. Shot in sapphire tones and set to an extraordinary operatic score, BLUE is an overwhelming sensory experience.
THREE COLORS: WHITE
Sat, Sep 3 | Wed, Sep 7

THREE COLORS: WHITE

The second of the Three Colors trilogy, WHITE — which chronicles the elaborate revenge of a Polish hairdresser living in Paris — manages to be both a ticklish dark comedy about the economic inequalities of Eastern and Western Europe and a sublime reverie about twisted love.
THREE COLORS: RED
Sun, Sep 4 | Thu, Sep 8

THREE COLORS: RED

Krzysztof Kieślowski closes his Three Colors trilogy in grand fashion with an incandescent meditation on fate and chance, an intimate look at forged connections, and a splendid final statement from a remarkable filmmaker at the height of his powers.