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Event
Chantal Akerman x 2: NO HOME MOVIE
Chantal Akerman x 2: NO HOME MOVIE
When Chantal Akerman passed away late last year, the cinema lost one of its most important and irreplaceable voices. Her stature has been amply demonstrated by the many tributes taking place throughout the New York repertory film community numerous screenings and talks have taken place in recent months, and more are on the way, not least a comprehensive retrospective at BAMcinématek in April.
That Anthology should take part in these tributes is only fitting, since our ties with Akerman are deep and longstanding. In recent years weve hosted Chantal and shown her films on many occasions, including presenting the NYC premiere engagements of her last two fiction features, LA CAPTIVE and ALMAYERS FOLLY. But Chantal also credited Anthology as a key source of inspiration during the year and a half she spent living in New York in the early 1970s; according to her, it was here (or rather at our original home at the Public Theater) that she was introduced to the work of filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Michael Snow, Andy Warhol, and others, who would exert a decisive influence on her work.
And so its with this background in mind that we pay our own tribute to Akerman by hosting encore screenings of her extraordinary final work, NO HOME MOVIE (immediately following its run at BAMcinématek), alongside the long-awaited NYC premiere engagement of a film that stands in close and fascinating dialogue with it, 2006s LÀ-BAS (DOWN THERE). A personal documentary that Akerman shot almost entirely within a Tel Aviv apartment, LÀ-BAS shares with NO HOME MOVIE a profound interiority (both literal and figurative), a haunting stillness, a concern with Jewish identity, and an emphasis on the relationship between Akerman and her mother. Ultimately, both films comprise a heartbreaking meditation on the loss or impossibility of a sense of belonging. A filmmaker who explored deeply personal themes with uncompromising perception and unparalleled formal innovation, Akerman was a giant of world cinema, and her death represents an enormous loss.
LÀ-BAS and NO HOME MOVIE are distributed by Icarus Films; special thanks to Jonathan Miller & Livia Bloom.
Akermans final work, released shortly after her death and inevitably shadowed by it, NO HOME MOVIE is a sustained portrait of her mother, Natalia. A crucial figure in Akermans cinema throughout her career, Natalia was born in Poland, fled to Belgium during the war, and was eventually sent to and survived Auschwitz. NO HOME MOVIE documents the last months of her life, and of Natalia and Akermans relationship, with the intimacy and domesticity of a diary film. Akerman seems to film perpetually, recording her conversations with her mother, in person, via phone, and over Skype, as well as Natalia simply existing, in long, uneventful passages that call to mind Akermans masterpiece, JEANNE DIELMAN. But like LÀ-BAS, NO HOME MOVIEs simplicity and apparent artlessness are deceptive, masking a great depth of feeling, a palpable sense of searching, and a desire to confront, by means of the camera, mortality, time, and loss.
In an age of seductive slickness, of Instagram-curated happiness, Akerman continues to confront what Joan Didion termed the unspeakable peril of the everyday, doing so in a disarmingly honest, unembellished way which gives weight and credence to nervous collapses, emotional impairment, and fears about the precariousness of life. Both elliptical and tryingly quotidian, NO HOME MOVIE is a shattering contemplation of loss and grief as much as it is a search for identity and calm, for rootedness from a perpetually nomadic, breathless soul. It is not a home movie: it is a movie about having no home. Andréa Picard, CINEMA SCOPE
SCREENING DETAILS:
Chantal Akerman
NO HOME MOVIE
In French with English subtitles, 2015, 115 min, digital.
- Fri, April 15, Sun, April 17, Tues, April 19, and Thurs, April 21 at 8:45pm; Sat April 16, Mon April 18, and Wed, April 20 at 6:45pm.
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LocationAnthology Film Archives (View)
32 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10003
United States
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| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
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