From the East
Film critic Louis-Jean Decazes has curated this program to give viewers a chance to reconnect with the fundamentals of cinema, that window onto the world. Most of the films in this series explore themes of disorientation and a sense of being out of sync. With sought-after and rare films from Straub-Huillet, Akerman, Ivens...
Restored in 2022 by the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique (CINEMATEK) and the Fondation Chantal Akerman, under the supervision of the director of photography, Rémon Fromont and with the collaboration of sound engineer Thomas Gauder.
Following the demolition of the Berlin Wall, Chantal Akerman captures the reality and mutation of former Soviet territories, shot from summer through to winter in a series of travelling shots or with a static camera. From East Germany to Moscow, passing through Poland, Lithuania and the Ukraine, she records the bodies and faces of the anonymous masses, their expressions unreadable, either walking or simply waiting for who knows what. She films buildings, landscapes, snow, nightfall and offers a mass of visual and aural impressions that constitute a bewitching, impressionistic poem.
(Fondation Chantal Akerman - CINEMATEK)
Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York. She is best known for her films Je Tu Il Elle (1974), Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), and News from Home (1976). The second of these was ranked the greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound magazine's 2022 "Greatest Films of All Time" critics poll, making her the first woman to top the poll. The other two films also appeared in the same poll. Chantal Akerman is considered one of the leading figures of modern cinema and a pioneer of contemplative cinema.
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Travelogues, images en errance
Dès les origines du cinéma, la curiosité du regard occidental s’empare de ce nouvel outil, la caméra, pour explorer l’ailleurs. À l’orée du XXe siècle, les travelogues – ces documentaires de voyage mêlant découverte et exotisme – émergent dans le sillage de l’invention des frères Lumière. Munis de leurs appareils, opérateurs, ethnographes et explorateurs capturent des images du lointain avec une ambition d’objectivité, offrant au public une fenêtre inédite sur des cultures étrangères, souvent fantasmées.
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