In 1968 Chantal Akerman inaugurates her oeuvre by blowing up her small kitchen. She later described her debut as “the mirror image of Jeanne Dielman”, in which a person who doesn’t need rules blows life’s rituals to bits. Notably absent is the mother, central motif in her oeuvre and at the heart of her last film, No Home Movie.
Also in this combined programme
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Bread
Bread hones in on the symbolic role of food, specifically in the way that it highlights gendered imbalances of power in the entertainment industry. -
Belladonna
A number of somber talking heads frankly describe their most personal and perverse attitudes on sex, violence and other family matters. -
Semiotics of the Kitchen
A woman stands in a kitchen surrounded by gadgets, picking up each of them and naming them alphabetically with precise, controlled, angry movements. -
Mixed Messages
An experimental video collage that examines gender-stereotyping in popular culture, concluding with a post-modern version of the Pandora myth. -
Play Boy
An experimental film spliced together from the detritus of early 1980s Times Square porn and pawn shops. Gritty, sensorial and hypnotic.
Film details
- Country of production
- Belgium
- Year
- 1968
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2020
- Length
- 11'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
