A Nos Amours Chantal Akerman News From Home

La Chambre (The Room, 1)
Director: Chantal Akerman.
Belgium 1972, 11m.

Akerman's first experimental film shot in New York is of her cluttered apartment. A moving still life, wherein the hues are reminiscent of the old Flemish masters. Akerman cites the influence of the American structuralist filmmakers of that period, such as Jonas Mekas, Michael Snow and Andy Warhol. “They opened my mind to many things – the relationship between film and your body, time as the most important thing in film, time and energy.”

News From Home
Dir: Chantal Akerman. Cast: Chantal Akerman.
France/Belgium/Germany 1976, 85m

News From Home is a film essay that reveals the quotidian reality of the streets, subways and citizens of New York. Narrated by Akerman through her mothers letters, the film explores the metaphor of the maternal body as homeland through a poetic and formal structure.

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Chantal Akerman is a filmmaker whose wide-ranging film and video practices explore themes of identity, sexuality, quotidian reality and exile, and works against conventional filmmaking in order to discover new worlds. As J. Hoberman has said: "Comparable in force and originality to Godard or Fassbinder, Chantal Akerman is arguably the most important European director of her generation."

A series of screened shorts and features programmed by Sacha Airlie in conjunction with the A Nos Amours retrospective of the complete film works of Chantal Akerman at the ICA in London. Please see www.anosamours.co.uk for further information.

This project has been kindly supported by The University of Glasgow's Creative Practice Fund and is extremely grateful to Lore Gablier and Paradise films.

A Nos Amours is supported by the British Film Institute, Wallonie-Bruxelles International and Film Hub London (managed by Film London)