Filtration: The Double Life of Veronique

In this film education series, cinematographer, film colourist and educator Devan Scott illuminates the ways filmmakers have created mood and meaning through the manipulation of colour. Each 40 minute talk will examine a different colour process – including lighting, tinting, production design – within its historical context, and exploring its aesthetic, artistic and storytelling attributes.

Each talk will be followed by a complementary screening, today: The Double Life of Veronique.

Directly filtering the image that comes into a camera’s lens allows cinematographers to vastly alter how a scene looks and feels. We’ll analyze the radical ways Kieslowski’s closet collaborator, cinematographer Slawomir Idziak, uses his complex system of filters to editorialize images, express the emotional state of characters, and establish place in such films as Three Colours: Blue, The Double Life of Veronique, and A Short Film About Killing.

About the film: Krzysztof Kieślowski’s international breakthrough remains one of his most beloved films, a ravishing, mysterious rumination on identity, love, and human intuition. Irène Jacob is incandescent as both Weronika, a Polish choir soprano, and her double, Véronique, a French music teacher. Though unknown to each other, the two women share an enigmatic, emotional bond, which Kieślowski details in gorgeous reflections, colors, and movements. Aided by Slawomir Idziak’s shimmering cinematography and Zbigniew Preisner’s haunting, operatic score, Kieślowski creates one of cinema’s most purely metaphysical works. The Double Life of Véronique is an unforgettable symphony of feeling.

Talk: 1:00 pm
The Double Life of Veronique: 1:45 pm

This film will also play as part of the Total Cinema series.