City College of New York and the Film Society of Lincoln Center will present a free tribute to the late master Chantal Akerman on Saturday, March 19 at 10:00AM. Belgian-born and Paris-based, Chantal Akerman was a cinematic visionary—among the most significant filmmakers of the last half-century. She was also a New Yorker who lived and taught in the city.
Akerman passed away last fall, shortly before the U.S. Premiere of her final feature film, No Home Movie, at the 53rd New York Film Festival. In celebration of the late filmmaker’s work, free screenings of two of her masterworks, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and Chantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman, were added to the festival’s lineup. Akerman’s work will also be honored in at Film Comment Selects festival, which closes with a screening of her 1986 musical comedy, Golden Eighties.
Following the news of her death, New York Film Festival director Kent Jones wrote about the impact she had on him and larger film community:
“Chantal was direct, tough, and emotionally extravagant. She was small in stature but she commanded a room with her fatigued stance, her grand and sometimes wicked smile, her wild rough-grained voice, and her eyes. The eyes had it. I’ve rarely looked into a pair of eyes so bewitching.
As a filmmaker, she didn’t have a commercial bone in her body. She gave it a try with Golden Eighties and A Couch in New York and, to a certain extent, Tomorrow We Move, all of which are fascinating films, the latter in particular, a dizzying, angular, breathless movie with an undercurrent of anxious sadness. There are some funny, lyrical passages in A Couch in New York (and in the resolutely deadpan black-and-white short J’ai faim, j’ai froid), but she didn’t really have the temperament for comedy or high spirits. She made films of extraordinary tonal control—for instance, Toute une nuit, the ferocious La Captive and, of course, Jeanne Dielman—but I would hesitate to call any of them elegant. Elegance wasn’t her thing. She was involved, deeply so, with the sounding of mysteries and enigmas drifting or hovering just beyond the everyday world, the shattering strangeness of people living through a hot summer night or trying out for a movie musical or walking the halls of the Hotel Monterey.”
Chantal Akerman: New York Remembers will take place in the Walter Reade Theater and will feature films, music, and personal reminiscences. Speakers will include Jonas Mekas, Babette Mangolte, Andrew Bujalski, and more. The tribute will be followed by a reception in the Film Society’s Furman Gallery. The event is free and open to the public.
