Chantal Akerman, 67'

Marianne Lambert, I Don’t Belong Anywhere: Le cinéma de Chantal Akerman. 67'

#review

Review by EO

I travel through Chantal Ackerman’s life and work, with her as my tour guide.

She tells me about her films whilst sitting on her bed. I see the contours of a New York City highrise through the window behind her. We travel by cab, she has a hat on. We eat a sandwich in a New York City diner. We have a beer and a cigarette in a Brussels cafe.

I could listen to her raspy soothing voice for hours.

The voice that tells me about her mother taking piano lessons after escaping the concentration camps. How Chantal never knew about these lessons, because by the time she was born her mother was too busy to play. Busy with the repetitive chores that inspired Chantals movie Jeanne Dielman. We look at some clips from the film and see a woman cleaning, peeling, folding.

Chantal lights a cigarette whilst we look at some of the film footage she made of her mother. On the screen, Chantal is struggling through her mothers house, alone with a camera, a table used as a tripod, looking for the right frame. Her mother is wading through the frame, also struggling a little.

She shows me that her mother is at the heart of her work, and shares her worries that now her mother is no longer alive, she will have nothing left to say.

She takes me back to her childhood home in Brussels. We look out of the window; kids are playing in the street. Chantal was not allowed to play in the streets, her mother was too scared to let her go. So she observed. So we observe.

Chantal takes me into her world and makes me want to hold on to her, I want her to be my friend, my mother. After one hour and seven minutes I don’t want to leave.