Introduction by VES Professor Giuliana Bruno
Monday February 8 at 7pm
No Home MovieDirected by Chantal Akerman
Belgium 2015, DCP, color, 115 min. French with English subtitles
Chantal Akerman’s moving and at times painfully intimate portrait of her elderly mother is the last film by the Belgian filmmaker before her tragic death in October. Akerman’s bold originality and courage as an artist guide the film’s restless searching for some kind of resolution to her difficult relationship with both her mother and her native Belgium. The rough-hewn texture of the digital video used in No Home Movie effectively conveys the emotional rawness and inquietude of the halting conversations captured between mother and daughter, whether within the confines of the elderly woman’s Brussels apartment or the uneasy ether of Skype. While moments of fleeting tenderness and solace are also found in the quiet, quotidian rituals that structure Natalia Akerman’s life, the stark and extended opening image of a windswept Israeli desert landscape haunts the film with a sense of resolute strength and absolute loneliness. DCP courtesy Icarus Films.
