Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman

Ricky D'Ambrose

Chantal Akerman

Interview with the Belgian director discussing her films from the 1970s and her mother’s influence on her work.

Femmes d'Anvers en Novembre

Chantal Akerman

Femmes d’Anvers en novembre is a dual projection piece rich in atmosphere and charm, filled with references to early French and American film noir – a deliberate homage, shot in close-up and medium close-up, to the smoking woman. The focus on the everyday activities of women (the core trope of Akerman’s masterpiece Jeanne Dielman) is a recurring theme in much of her work; Femmes d'Anvers signals a return to this motif. In it, Akerman tackles the thorny question of a person’s fundamental freedom to choose what to do with his or her body.

Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles

Chantal Akerman

Circé Lethem, Julien Rassam

The main character, Michele, spends the hour discussing her views of life with some old and new friends, and tries to understand her own feelings about her place in the world and her sexuality, while a camera follows along at close range.

À l'est avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton

Chantal Akerman

Sonia Wieder-Atherton

Presented in 2 parts, this 83 minute piece documents Wieder-Atherton's idea to do a set of pieces from across central and eastern Europe, including Russia. Some weren't originally written for cello, but she had them transcribed. Some were songs for voices, which goes with Wieder-Atherton saying in an earlier film she made with Chantal Akerman that she aspires to play the cello in a way that it carries the specificity of emotion of the human voice. She explains at the beginning of both parts how she feels each country in the region has it's own personality expressed in its music, coming from its individual history and culture, but that each land in the area is also 'impregnated' as she puts it, by the others, so there are certain elements that run throughout.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles

Chantal Akerman

Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte

A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores and takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. Slowly, her ritualized daily routines begin to fall apart.

News from Home

Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman's loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.

Avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton

Chantal Akerman

Sonia Wieder-Atherton

The short documentary starts with Wieder-Atherton telling the story of how she came to fall in love; first with music in general, and then with the cello, and goes on tell how she found her specific style, using the music to try and almost form words of communication. It's a delightful and enlightening interview. This is followed by Wieder-Atherton playing 6 short pieces of quite different styles, from the heartbreaking melodies of Schubert and Brahms to Berio's more edgy modern sounds.

Delphine and Carole

Callisto McNulty

Delphine Seyrig, Carole Roussopoulos

In the 70s, actress Delphine Seyrig and director Carole Roussopoulos, both militant feminists, were the pioneers of video activism in France. They documented the demonstrations of French feminists and used the new technologies to counter the poor representation of women in the public media.

The Meetings of Anna

Chantal Akerman

Aurore Clément, Helmut Griem

On a trip across Western Europe to promote her newest release, filmmaker Anna encounters several individuals—familiar and otherwise—and attends to their discontents.

Le Déménagement

Chantal Akerman

Sami Frey

"A man stands amid unpacked boxes in his new home, delivering an extended monologue on indecision and dislocation. This rarely seen, overlooked gem created by Akerman for television explores the quotidian crises and profound feelings of alienation that run through her work." - BAM

Autour de Jeanne Dielman

Chantal Akerman, Sami Frey

Chantal Akerman, Babette Mangolte

During the filming of "Jeanne Dielman" Sami Frey recorded what was happening on the set. A film about a film in the making.

D'Est

Chantal Akerman

Natalia Chakhovskaia

Chantal Akerman has toured Eastern Europe through Russia, Poland, Ukraine filming everything that moved her : faces, streets, cars, buses, stations, landscapes, interiors, queues, doors, windows, meals. Women and men, young and old passing or stopping, seated or standing. Days and nights, rain, snow and wind, winter and spring.

Birth of a Nation

Jonas Mekas

Chantal Akerman, Kenneth Anger

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.

I Don’t Belong Anywhere : Le Cinéma de Chantal Akerman

Marianne Lambert

Chantal Akerman, Gus Van Sant

I Don’t Belong Anywhere - Le Cinéma de Chantal Akerman, explores some of the Belgian filmmaker’s 40 plus films. From Brussels to Tel-Aviv, from Paris to New-York, this documentary charts the sites of her peregrinations. An experimental filmmaker, a nomad, Chantal Akerman shares her cinematic trajectory, one that has never ceased to interrogate the the meaning of her existence. Thanks in great part to the interventions of her editor, Claire Atherton, she delineates the origins of her film language and her aesthetic stance.

Tell Me

Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman, Natalia Akerman

Chantal Akerman meets with elderly Jewish women in Paris, all of them survivors of the Shoah, and listens to their family stories. Between interviews, Akerman's mother Natalia speaks of her own family. Made for a French miniseries on grandmothers.

Les Ministères de l'art

Philippe Garrel

Chantal Akerman, Juliet Berto

Philippe Garrel’s documentary on France’s second wave of masterful filmmakers. Featuring Jean Eustache, Chantal Akerman, André Téchiné, Leos Carax, Jacques Doillon and Benoit Jacquot.