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Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors Trilogy is showing from December, 2019 and January, 2020 on Mubi in the United Kingdom.I watched my first Krzysztof Kieślowski as a high schooler, sitting next to my mother, in my town’s only cinema. As with anything in the early stages of my cinephilia, that baptism had been her idea. The movie theatre we’d pay weekly pilgrimages to had allocated a whole three-day run to The Decalogue (1989), and she thought that Kieślowski’s Ten Commandments TV saga would be a good place to start. I forgot much about those few hours, but not the perturbing feeling that crept up on me as the ten chapters began to unfold on screen. I sensed—and it’s a feeling that keeps resurfacing anytime I tread into a Kieślowski film, however many times I may have seen it already—that I’d been there before. That curious déjà-vu...

In an interview with The Criterion Collection in preparation for the release of her masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels, released in 1975, director Chantal Akerman was asked about why she hired women for nearly every job available on set. She elaborated on the history of the film business and eloquently spoke about the lack of opportunities women get with technical jobs in the film industry. She pointed out that it wasn’t rare to see a woman work in costuming or hair and make-up or even editing, but it was rare to see a woman in the director’s chair or work as a director of photography. She wanted to prove a point that women could work any job a man could on a film set, and she did. It was also in 1975 when Laura Mulvey wrote her landmark essay Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema on the theory of the...

This week's clip joint rifles through the record collection to find the best scenes with characters forced to face the music

This week's Clip joint is by James Kipping, a freelance floor runner for film and television. Think you can do better? Email your idea for a future Clip joint to adam.boult@guardian.co.uk

Diegetic music in film is often heard in clubs scenes or car radios, creating atmosphere but rarely having the power to affect characters. So going for the most despondent Clip joint award, here are a selection of films that feature recurring songs that haunt our characters, songs that bring either painful memories or strike fear in others that hear them. The positive note being that I like to think these characters enjoyed the songs at some point in their lives…

1. Three Colours: Blue (Song for the Unification of Europe)

After Juliette Binoche's composer...

It’s a little daunting writing about Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy. Filmed back to back and released to universal acclaim at consecutive Venice (Blue, 1993), Berlin (White, 1994) and Cannes (Red, 1994) Film Festivals, the Polish director’s disparate trilogy has taken on a kind of legendary status, with each film recognised as a classic even if removed from the pretence of any overarching theme (nominally that each film represents a French revolutionary ideal: liberty, equality and fraternity) or strained attempt at inter-film continuity (all three stories touch on each other in ways which are arguably entirely superfluous).

Each film is entirely different, not only in terms of story but in genre, setting and mood. Blue, which stars Juliette Binoche as a widow living in the shadow of a car crash which has killed her husband and daughter, is a tragedy and deeply introverted drama about a person’s longing to...

Philippe Garrel, now in his 60s, is semi-famous for being semi-obscure, even in France, though he remains one of the last stragglers to have fallen under the New Wave umbrella. (When he was 20, he trailed Godard, who in Jonathan Rosenbaum's phrase "virtually adopted him in May '68, when both were cruising the Latin Quarter student demonstrations with their cameras.") Here, Garrel had to wait until "Regular Lovers" (2005) for a film of his to find stateside distribution. But it's a small wonder: Garrel's career project is resolutely personal and self-examining, to a degree that makes Cassavetes and even Godard look like rangy entertainers. His approach is observational and so intimate you begin to sweat the bell jar effect of the locations. Garrel's life has been tumultuous -- including a decade spent with Nico, making impromptu experimental films and doing heroin, on and off Ibiza -- and it's his life that's onscreen,...