Film Forum

Chantal Akerman, one of the leading filmmakers of her generation, took her own life last fall. Vincent Canby, in a New York Times review of JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES, wrote: “It’s not difficult to understand the extraordinary underground reputation of this lengthy, very beautiful Belgian film starring Delphine Seyrig, a screen presence comparable, perhaps, only to Garbo… The terrible, obsessive monotony of the life it observes is ultimately as melodramatic as, say, Roman Polanski’s REPULSION.” Akerman went on to make more than 40 movies that both intrigued and confounded critics and audiences. Marianne Lambert, a longtime colleague, portrays the artist as a nomad who sought an emotional home that eluded her. With sequences shot just after her mother’s death in 2014, Akerman says candidly: “I realized my mother was at the heart of my work. And now that my mother is no longer there, will I have something to say?”

BUT ELSEWHERE IS ALWAYS BETTER, a new short film by Vivian Ostrovsky, using her own footage of Chantal Akerman, beginning with their first meeting in the early 1970s, will be presented prior to all screenings.

All Tickets Free of Charge.

Tickets available on a first come, first served basis, day of show only, when the box office opens at noon (10:30am on Sunday). There is no advanced ticketing for this film.

Presented with generous support from the Ostrovsky Family Foundation
and the Joan S. Constantiner Fund for Jewish and Holocaust Films.

BELGIUM • 2015 • 67 MINS. • IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES • ICARUS FILMS

Playing at Film Forum April 1-7:
JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES

BAMcinématek presents a career-spanning retrospective of Chantal Akerman’s films, including the theatrical premiere of No Home Movie, April 1—May 1.

Reviews

Read Vivian Ostrovsky’s tribute to Akerman, “I Didn’t See Time Go By,” in Senses of Cinema here.

“An affecting final portrait. Impressionistic.”
– Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

“Akerman possessed impressive self-knowledge… witty, charming and sagacious, a delightful raconteur who clearly was hiding the shadows of family trauma all the time that she was making films.”
– George Robinson, The Jewish Week

“Akerman cuts a fascinating figure worthy of both study and praise – and leaves a body of work that will endure… The film communicates this insight through intimate conversations with her, cross-cut with well-chosen clips from her expansive body of work… The cumulative effect helps bring an artist, whose work is often heady, down to a wonderfully relatable human scale.”
– Sean Egan, The Villager