Kirjahaku

Chantal Akerman is widely acclaimed as one of the most original and important directors working in Europe today. A towering figure in women’s and feminist film-making, she has produced a diverse and intensely personal body of work ranging from minimalist portraits of the everyday to exuberant romantic comedies, and from documentaries and musicals to installation art. This book traces the director’s career at the crossroads between experimental and mainstream cinema, contextualising her work within the American avant-garde of the 1970s, European anti-naturalism, feminism and the post-modern aesthetics. While offering an in-depth analysis of her multi-faceted film style, it also stresses the social and ethical dimension of her work, especially as regards her representation of marginal groups and her exploration of exilic and diasporic identities. Particular attention is given to the inscription of the Holocaust and of Jewish memory in her films.

Belgian auteur Chantal Akerman's ouevre is profoundly philosophical, exploring everything from home and homelessness, work and social reproduction, self and identity, to desire in its many forms. In particular, Akerman turns her camera on contexts that had been previously neglected, such as transitional spaces like hotel lobbies and street corners as well as the domestic sphere, revealing their significance in structuring experience.Andreja Novakovic looks at the role of rituals, gestures and habits in Akerman’s (auto)fictional worlds drawing on writers from Hegel to Butler, Beauvoir and Federici. Chantal Akerman is a fascinating philosophical reinterpretation of one of the most important directors of European experimental and independent cinema.

Chantal Akerman turns her pioneering camera on neglected contexts from transitional spaces like hotel lobbies and street corners, to domestic spaces like kitchens and bedrooms. Through her wide ranging films, Akerman addresses subjects such as home and homelessness, work and social reproduction, self and identity, and desire in its many forms.This book is the first philosophical study of Akerman’s oeuvre. Andreja Novakovic looks at patterns of staying put and moving on in the Belgian auteur’s deeply personal body of work, drawing on writers from Cavell to Beauvoir and Federici. It is an absorbing reinterpretation of one of the most important directors of European cinema, whose Jeanne Dielman was recently selected as Sight and Sound’s Greatest Film of All Time.

Chantal Akerman is widely acclaimed as one of cinema’s boldest visionaries. A towering figure in women’s and feminist film-making, she produced a diverse and intensely personal body of work ranging from minimalist portraits of the everyday to exuberant romantic comedies, and from documentaries and musicals to installation art. This book traces the director’s career at the crossroads between experimental and mainstream cinema, contextualising her work within the American avant-garde of the 1970s, European anti-naturalism, feminism and the post-modern aesthetics. While offering an in-depth analysis of her multi-faceted film style, it also stresses the social and ethical dimension of her work, especially as regards her representation of marginal groups and her exploration of exilic and diasporic identities. Particular attention is given to the inscription of the Holocaust and of Jewish memory in her films.

Chantal Akerman was one of the most significant directors of our times. A radical innovator of cinematic forms, she was at the forefront of feminist and women's filmmaking. In the 1990s, she developed an important installation practice and began to experiment with self-writing.Focusing on Akerman's works of the last two decades, a period during which she diversified her creative practice, this collection traces her artistic trajectory across different media. From her documentaries 'bordering on fiction' to her final installation, NOW, the volume elucidates the thematic and aesthetic concerns of the later works, placing particular emphasis on self-portraiture, the exploration of intimacy, and the treatment of trauma, memory and exile. It also attends to the aural and visual textures that underpin her art. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical approaches as well as engaging more creatively with Akerman's work, the essays provide a new optic for understanding this deeply personal, prescient oeuvre.Marion Schmid is Professor of French Literature and Film at the University of Edinburgh. Emma Wilson is Professor of French Literature and the Visual Arts at the University of Cambridge.

Filmmaker and artist Chantal Akerman was one of the most fearless filmmakers of her generation. Her work blurs the boundaries of time and space, of film and art. It can be seen in cinemas and museums worldwide. She may be largely unknown to the general public, but she is revered by cinephiles, visual artists and filmmakers. The impact of her oeuvre on world cinema became abundantly clear when Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was named best film of all time by British magazine Sight and Sound. In 2024, Bozar-Centre for Fine Arts, Jeu de Paume and CINEMATEK will pay tribute to Akerman by organising the first major exhibition on the Brussels artist. This book accompanying the exhibition features people who were closest to Akerman and can offer unique insights: the people who worked with her or were inspired by her. Exhibitions: Bozar-Centre for Fine Arts – March 14 to July 21 2024 Jeu de Paume - September 28, 2024, to January 19, 2025 CINEMATEK - March 15 to July 21 2024

The milestone 100th issue of Camera Obscura recognizes the work and legacy of Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman (1950–2015). Arguably the most important figure in feminist film culture, Akerman is central to Camera Obscura's own legacy, and her film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was covered in one of the first issues of the journal. The contributors to this special issue return to Akerman's work, illuminating her films, writings, and installations through new criticism and discussion. The issue includes a rich collection of newly published photographs, scholarly essays by leading Akerman scholars, a filmography and installation list, and rare interviews with Akerman's close collaborators. Contributors. Claire Atherton, Janet Bergstrom, Kelley Conway, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Ute Holl, Heike Klippel, Eva Kuhn, Matias Lavin, Alisa Lebow, Brenda Longfellow, Babette Mangolte, Ivone Margulies, Michael Mazière, Eva Meyer, Sandra Percival, Jane Stein, Cécile Tourneur, Maureen Turim, Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Patricia White

A memoir in the form of a poetic musing on the inevitability of death and the difficulty of letting loved ones go." -Alex Greenberger, ARTnewsFirst published in France in 2013, My Mother Laughs is the final book written by the legendary and beloved Belgian artist and director Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) before her death. A moving and unforgettable memoir, the book delves deeply into one of the central themes and focuses of Akerman's often autobiographical films: her mother, who was the direct subject of her final film No Home Movie (2015). With a particular focus on the difficulties Akerman faced in conjunction with the end of her mother's life, the book combines a matter-of-fact writing style with family photographs and stills from her own films in order to better convey the totality of her experience. Akerman writes: "With pride because I finally believed in my ability to say something that I'd had trouble saying. I told myself, I am strong for once, I speak. I tell the truth." Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist and professor. She is best known for her film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), which was dubbed a "masterpiece" by the New York Times. During her 42 years of active filmmaking, Akerman's influence on queer, feminist and avant-garde cinema remains unmatched, her films highlighting a near-physical passage of time. Akerman's films have been shown at the Venice Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, among many others.

In 2013, the filmmaker Chantal Akerman's mother was dying. She flew back from New York to care for her, and between dressing her, feeding her and putting her to bed, she wrote. She wrote about her childhood, the escape her mother made from Auschwitz but didn't talk about, the difficulty of loving her girlfriend, C., her fear of what she would do when her mother did die. Among these imperfectly perfect fragments of writing about her life, she placed stills from her films. My Mother Laughs is both the distillation of the themes Akerman pursued throughout her creative life, and a version of the simplest and most complicated love story of all: that between a mother and a daughter.