Chantal Akerman,
girl of the world

PostED ON OCTOBER 14, 2016 AT 5PM

Everywhere or elsewhere, Chantal Akerman, observant director of others and herself, "is" a cinema of all textures with a common thread: documentary as a means of seduction.

The image of the documentary. And its sound... From the East, screened at Lumière, is a precise, dancing, elegant tribute, a journey through Eastern Europe in 1993. There are Akerman's very moving rituals; grey-hued green and pale silhouettes who madly dance in a ballroom; and the famous kitchen table profiles. Like "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" (1975), where Seyrig, in the title role for Akerman, makes breaded cutlets, calmly seated at the table; a man from the east in From the East, eats without paying attention to the camera, with Dantesque tranquility. The kitchen and all other places chosen by Akerman (Ah, elevators, and their artistic buttons! Ah, open hotel windows!) are territories where every action is important.

Embarking with Chantal Akerman is always a sensitive, inward journey, paradoxically based on a hellishly illustrated landscape that defines the uniqueness of the Belgian filmmaker's and qualifies her element of surprise. Akerman's films are unsuspecting scenes, broken and nevertheless so strong. In The Meetings of Anna (1978), Jean-Pierre Cassel, lying down and nearly naked, implores his lover, played by Aurore Clement, not to be too erotic with him, as if it were an embarrassment. A life in the present that should be explored from now on.

Virginie Apiou

Homage to Chantal Akerman

From the East by Chantal Akerman (1993, 1h55)
Thursday, October 13 at 2:30pm at the CNP Bellecour
Friday, October 14 at 2:30pm at the| Cinéma Opéra