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Événement
Chantal Akerman x 2: LÀ-BAS
Chantal Akerman x 2: LÀ-BAS
When Chantal Akerman passed away late last year, the cinema lost one of its most important and irreplaceable voices. Her stature has been amply demonstrated by the many tributes taking place throughout the New York repertory film community numerous screenings and talks have taken place in recent months, and more are on the way, not least a comprehensive retrospective at BAMcinématek in April.
That Anthology should take part in these tributes is only fitting, since our ties with Akerman are deep and longstanding. In recent years weve hosted Chantal and shown her films on many occasions, including presenting the NYC premiere engagements of her last two fiction features, LA CAPTIVE and ALMAYERS FOLLY. But Chantal also credited Anthology as a key source of inspiration during the year and a half she spent living in New York in the early 1970s; according to her, it was here (or rather at our original home at the Public Theater) that she was introduced to the work of filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Michael Snow, Andy Warhol, and others, who would exert a decisive influence on her work.
And so its with this background in mind that we pay our own tribute to Akerman by hosting encore screenings of her extraordinary final work, NO HOME MOVIE (immediately following its run at BAMcinématek), alongside the long-awaited NYC premiere engagement of a film that stands in close and fascinating dialogue with it, 2006s LÀ-BAS (DOWN THERE). A personal documentary that Akerman shot almost entirely within a Tel Aviv apartment, LÀ-BAS shares with NO HOME MOVIE a profound interiority (both literal and figurative), a haunting stillness, a concern with Jewish identity, and an emphasis on the relationship between Akerman and her mother. Ultimately, both films comprise a heartbreaking meditation on the loss or impossibility of a sense of belonging. A filmmaker who explored deeply personal themes with uncompromising perception and unparalleled formal innovation, Akerman was a giant of world cinema, and her death represents an enormous loss.
LÀ-BAS and NO HOME MOVIE are distributed by Icarus Films; special thanks to Jonathan Miller & Livia Bloom.
ABOUT LÀ-BAS
Made during a brief stay in Israel, where Akerman was teaching at the University of Tel Aviv, LÀ-BAS takes the chamber play to its ultimate extreme: it is almost entirely chamber. Filmed predominantly from within the apartment where she was residing during her time in Tel Aviv, LÀ-BAS finds Akerman, in voiceover, musing on her family, her Jewish identity, and her childhood, while with her camera she creates a counterpoint between the interior of the apartment and the outside world visible through the aperture of its windows. Reluctant to make a filmic statement about Israel, with LÀ-BAS Akerman has created instead a deeply reflective film that indirectly, and without rhetoric, engages with the Israel question, wondering whether normal life is possible in this place and whether filming is a viable way of grappling with its complexities.
"Before, after, and between the narrative feature filmsthat anchor her status as a world-class filmmaker and one of the most indispensable of her post-Godard generation, Akerman has made some 20 works (films, performances, gallery installations) whose basic form is the letter sometimes written to her by another, or by her to another, but most often by and to herself....LÀ-BAS is both the most fragile and most powerful of these works." - Amy Taubin, FILM COMMENT
SCREENING DETAILS:
Chantal Akerman
LÀ-BAS
2006, 78 min, digital.
- Fri, April 15, Sun, April 17, Tues, April 19, and Thurs, April 21 at 7:00pm; Sat April 16, Mon April 18, and Wed, April 20 at 9:15pm.
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