Chantal Akerman

Delphine and Carole – Delphine Seyrig, the actress who starred in the films of Resnais and Buñuel, Duras and Akerman; and Carole Roussopoulos, the pioneering video-maker, who, after Jean-Luc Godard, was only the second person in France to use video as a film production tool. From the mid-1970s, in the turbulence of post’68 and the feminist movement, the two women embarked on a militant working partnership, making a series of videos devised as political interventions to champion the struggle of women, whether actresses, prostitutes or workers.
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Jonas Mekas’ BIRTH OF A NATION (1997) continues the filmmaker’s investigation into the possibilities of film-as-diary to offer glimpses of key figures of experimental cinema, including Stan Brakhage, Tony Conrad, and Michael Snow, compiled from footage shot over four decades. As far back as the masterpieces WALDEN (1969) and LOST, LOST, LOST (1976), Mekas has been turning his roaming camera on those around him, eschewing conventional documentary in favour of a more impressionistic, subjective engagement with his friends and surroundings.Read More »

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New York City’s Monterey is a residence hotel; the residents we see are older, most live alone. The camera, usually stationery, begins with a look into the lobby. The film ends with a panorama from the hotel’s rooftop. There’s no soundtrack. The lobby is clean with granite floors. Men wear hats. People enter and exit an elevator. The camera looks out from within the elevator as doors open and close. People sit alone and motionless in their apartments. There are long shots of empty halls. Paint peels. The flooring on upper levels is linoleum. Hall lights are florescent. Doors open a crack then close. The film provides the feeling of what it’s like to live there.Read More »

A burlesque comedy made on a large(ish) budget by the mistress of small and often serious independent films.

A temporary apartment swap between a man in New York and a girl in Paris leads to hilarious developments. Henry (William Hurt) is a rich psychiatrist in his forties with a fantastic apartment in New York City. After his relationship breaks up he feels the need to come to himself. He puts an ad in the Paris edition of The Herald Tribune, in which he offers to swap his flat. The young dancer Beatrice (a role in which Juliette Binoche proves her great comic talent) pores over the The Herald every day to improve her English and sees Henry’s ad. Read More »

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What constitutes a deadly sin today? Seven of the world’s best-known women directors produce their own version of celluloid sin in this omnibus film. Helke Sander (THE GERMANS AND THEIR MEN) reverses GLUTTONY with her vision of Eve forcing her apples into the hands of a reluctant Adam. Bette Gordon (VARIETY, EMPTY SUITCASES) finds GREED during a fight in the ladies’ room of a luxury hotel over a lottery ticket. Strangers reply to director Maxi Cohen’s ad in a newspaper to share their litanies in ANGER. Award-winning director, Chantal Akerman, battles to overcome her SLOTH in order to complete her film, while Valie Export (INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES) strips bare notions of the skin trade in LUST. Read More »

Documentary on post-Nouvelle Vague directors with Benoît Jacquot, André Téchiné, Jacques Doillon, Chantal Akerman, Werner Schroeter, Juliette Berto, Leos Carax and footage of Jean Eustache.
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Synopsis
A look at the troubled area of America’s Deep South, primarily focusing on the sadistic murder of James Byrd, an African-American man dragged to his death by three white supremacists. The film contains interviews with local inhabitants who discuss the problems caused by racism in the area both before and after the advent of the Civil Rights movement. Read More »

Filmmaker Jose Luis Guerin documents his experience during a year of traveling as a guest of film festivals to present his previous film. What emerges is a wonderfully humane and sincere portrayal of the people that he meets when he goes off the beaten track in some of the world’s major cities. (IMDB Plot Summary)Read More »

Dave McDougall at MUBI.com

Last Monday night, MoMA played two installments from the series “Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge…”, a series of one-hour television episodes “in which French directors were asked to contribute films based on their recollections of adolescence” (BFI). The first episode shown was Chantal Akerman’s Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960s in Brussels.

Akerman’s episode is an achievement of an entirely different level. It moves beyond being one of the great coming-of-age films; it is simply one of the great films. A moving, multifaceted, and magical hour, presented with honesty and subtle artistry.Read More »