Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman:Moving Through Time and Space at MIT List Visual Art Center –
May 2 – July 6, 2008
Chantal Akerman retraces a journey from the end of summer to deepest winter, from East Germany, across Poland and the Baltics, to Moscow. (via)
D’est on youtube
From the Other Side is an unsentimental look at the plight of illegal Mexican immigrants as they attempt the dangerous crossing from Agua Prieta in Sonora, Mexico, to Douglas, Ariz. (Via)
Last month Marian Goodman gallery (New York) exhibited Chantal Akerman’s photographs. (Chantal’s main audience is from museums, galleries and film societies.)
The first time I was introduced to Chantal Akerman’a work was her documenatary film on Pina Bausch.
(An Italian version of this film is cut awkwardly in 6 parts, now provided on youtube).
Other samples of film clips from youtube:
“Jeanne Dielmain”
Hotel Monterey (1972) Akerman – passage (Glenn Gould Bach aria is added to the silent film footage on Youtube)
A Couch in New York – trailer (Chantal’s most accessible film starring Juliet Binoche and William Hurt)
A week ago I decided to see “La Captive” starring my favorite actress Sylvie Testud.
Here was a review by Hoberman (scroll down)
Chantal Akerman’s La Captive is another sort of psycho-epistemological inquiry that asks: How can we know another?
Visual as La Captive is in its rigorously formal compositions, the filmmaker is straightforwardly concerned with language. She filters her Proust through the old nouveau roman of Duras or Robbe-Grillet to fixate on recurring phrases: “au contraire,” “if you like,” “you think so?” Similarly, Akerman takes situations from Proust and elaborately defamiliarizes them.