Triskel Arts Centre, in association with the British Film Institute, is delighted to present five features from the celebrated director Chantal Akerman. When J. Hoberman of The Village Voice wrote about her, he stated: “Comparable in force and originality to Godard or Fassbinder, Chantal Akerman is arguably the most important European director of her generation”. This season opens with her seminal 1975 film JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES, which was named as the greatest film of all time in Sight and Sound’s critic’s poll in 2022.
JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES
Chantal Akerman’s landmark second feature follows the meticulous daily routine of its titular lead over the course of three days. Voted Sight and Sound’s Greatest Film of All Time in 2022, marking the first time a female filmmaker has taken the number one spot, JEANNE DIELMAN is revolutionary in its bold experimental approach to narrative subject and structure. Charting the breakdown of its protagonist, a bourgeois Belgian housewife, mother and part-time sex worker over the course of three days, the film rigorously records her everyday life in extended time and hypnotic detail.
Chantal Akerman made her narrative feature debut with JE TU IL ELLE, a frank and vulnerable exploration of alienation which unfolds over two days. A woman (played by Akerman herself) has taken refuge in a room all by herself. Then, she ventures out from her self-imposed exile and seeks a connection with other human beings. First, a truck driver who picks her up, and then with a female ex-lover.
Chantal Akerman lived in New York during the early seventies. In 1976 she returned there and made this fascinating portrait film of the city, filming locations Akerman used to visit during her time living there, while on the soundtrack we hear her reading letters that her mother sent during this period.
Anna is a filmmaker from Belgium who is promoting her latest work. We see her travelling through Germany, Belgium, and France, going from city to city, meeting friends, strangers, ex-lovers and family. These fleeting interactions in different locations build to present a fascinating account of isolation.
GOLDEN EIGHTIES is a loud, brash and amusing comedy musical that follows the lives of retail employees and customers at a shopping mall. This is a bright and cheery film with infectious pop songs (director Chantal Akerman herself wrote the lyrics) and much humour, while exploring such topics as consumerism and feminism.
