Movement through confined space, revolving with the clock, showing slight progression, showing very little movement, being movement while showing almost none, dominating expectation with the camera and not the content, allowing slow, steady observation of every detail, detailing the objects repeatedly--stove, bed, chair, apple, body, etc. Change signifies a shift in focus, slowly penduluming back to the body, the woman, the person, in bed, returning to something more traditional, yet never quite traditional.

52 project: 46/52

Very simple—a camera moves around a room three times; nothing changes except the girl lying in bed. And then the camera starts turning back and focusing on the girl, swaying like a pendulum and then eventually deciding the carry on its moving way. Surprisingly dense for 12 minutes, or at least the type of structuralist short that suddenly had me asking a number of questions: what is space in a cinematic realm when we can’t see it? Why are we attracted to movement in cinema? What is the relationship between movement of captured objects and movement of the camera itself? Is the pleasure of movement a suggestion that spectatorship demands narrativization, even at the molecular level? And why is movement always placed most importantly on the human instead of other moving objects? Needless to say, a fascinating work that once again redeems the fact that I’m not hopeless when it comes to avant-garde cinema.

Someone should write a story that takes place during this movie about Chantal Akerman fighting off an assassin or some other threat while she's off screen, just barely in time to appear to be relaxing comfortably when the camera sweeps by her.

why did this make me cry

I gasped

Amazing motion self-portrait. Depression can look so beautiful in the sunlight.

spent the whole time waiting for the next time she made eye contact w the camera

19: Chantal Akerman in the Seventies

Yeah I’m probably gonna fall in love with Chantal Akerman :/

The first rotation had me in awe. The effect wavered a bit the more it happened, but I get it. I’m very, very much in love with the minute details; I understand it’s an apartment (probably hers) and not a built or arranged set, but that I eat that shit up and I want so much more.

Just want to note for myself that this and Record of a Tenement Gentleman are the foundations of my love of stillness. In the Mood for Love has it but not as extremely; Chantal is the only thing that moves, the only thing that has life, but even she doesn’t seem to be “alive”. It’s haunting; the room feels haunted; it’s scary yet so soothing.

Filmstruck; Eclipse 19
looking forward to delving into more Akerman’s work although a little part of me wishes i found them sooner

I love this movie so much

Structuralism is dope. Chantal Akerman made this when she was 21/22, I think this is the second or third film she ever made. It's not for everyone, but as someone who just took a course on avant-garde cinema, I thought this was pretty great.

Interesting quote from Akerman, "It was a revelation for me, that you could make a film without telling a story. And yet the tracking shots of <--------> (Back and Forth, 1969) in the classroom, with movements that are purely spatial while nothing is happening, produce a state of suspense as tense as anything in Hitchcock. I learned from them that a camera movement, just a movement of the camera, could trigger an emotional response as strong as from any narrative."