SOURCE: "Slightly Excited," in Sight and Sound, Vol. 4, No. 5, May, 1994, p. 35.

In the following review, Kemp asserts that more can be learned of Kieslowski from watching his films than from the book Kieslowski on Kieslowski.

Faber's 'Directors on Themselves' series, of which some half-dozen volumes have so far appeared, suffers from two inbuilt drawbacks. The obvious one is that some directors don't have anything interesting to say about their own films, in which case—as with David Thompson's valiant editing job on Barry Levinson—the sound of some fairly desperate barrel-scraping can be heard. The other is that, even given an articulate and perceptive subject, there's often a curiously airless feel to the books: the need for some keen critical side-winds, for windows to open up an alternative vista or two, makes itself insidiously felt.

Such ventilation can be achieved by turning the book into an extended dialogue...