Criterion announces Blu-ray release of Kieślowski’s “Three Colors” trilogy

I was slowing working my way through the post-vacation backlog of articles when Criterion’s announcement that they’ll be releasing Krzysztof Kieślowski’s influential “Three Colors” trilogy on Blu-ray jumped to the top of the pile. From the official announcement:

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 were named for the colors of the French flag and stand for the tenets of the French Revolution – liberty, equality, and fraternity – but this hardly begins to explain their enigmatic beauty and rich humanity. Set in Paris, Warsaw, and Geneva, and ranging from tragedy to comedy, Blue, White, and Red (Kieślowski’s final film) examine 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.

All three films have been restored with a “high-definition digital transfer”. Other features include: video essays from Annette Insdorf, Tony Rayns, and Dennis Lim; interviews with Zbigniew Preisner, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Julie Delpy, Irène Jacob, and more; commentaries and documentaries; and new subtitle translations. The Blu-ray and DVD box sets will both be released on November 15, 2011.

I’ve recently begun to rely more and more on web-based services like Netflix and Hulu for my home-viewing needs and have subsequently become less interested in owning actual physical media (like DVDs). However, there are some treasured titles that I will always want to be able to hold in my hands — e.g., the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Hayao Miyazaki’s movies — and the “Three Colors” trilogy is certainly one such group of titles.