CHANTAL AKERMAN HAS DIED

Sad sad news for the entire film community The filmmaker Chantal Akerman died  a suicide  suicide at the age of 65. Her most recent  film   No Home Movie is at the New York Film Festival right now and will have an encore screening on the last day of the festival, Oct 11th, 2015

Chantal Akerman changed the landscape of film history in the same way Godard did with her rigorous filmmaking technique which forced the eye of the viewer to actual look into the entire of a frame, each frame and see what was actually in the frame. Hers was not an easy entertainment viewing pleasure. But for me it was richly rewarding and widened  my understanding of how cinema can bring life and reality alive as a light flickers across a screen in a darken room full of strangers sharing a human experience

I found NO HOME MOVIE  deeply moving as she documented her relationship with her mother as her mother moves to the final year of her life. What could have been merely sentimental becomes an almost quiet epic of how mothers and daughters negotiate the essentials of family, responsibility and mutual compassion None of this is on the surface but the reward is so rich if one one is willing to submit to Akerman's cinematic discipline ...

No Home Movie clip

Here is a primer from the British Film Institute on how to watch Chantal Akerman's films Chantal Akerman for Beginers

Chantal Akerman's death is  a great loss today to  the world of cinematic art . Thank you Chantal for the pleasure you have given me.. and to the young critics at Locarno .. how do you feel today?

#NYFF, #filminc