Chantal Akerman was a Belgian director whose filmography consisted of experimental narrative films and intimate personal documentaries. For Akerman –– a Jewish woman who was also queer –– identity was always an important dimension of her work. In 1975, Akerman would release her magnum opus, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. The film is widely regarded as a masterpiece of feminist and arthouse cinema. The nearly three-and-a-half-hour film follows the lonely housewife Jeanne Dielman, played by French star…
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Out 1 1971
“You're all dreamers, not capable of doing anything.”
A colossal and influential work of experimental arthouse cinema, Jacques Rivette’s 1971 serial, Out 1: Noli Me Tangere, is an ode to an era of dashed revolutionaries and lost ideals and the closing curtain to the French New Wave. Known for its formidable 13-hour runtime, the film follows two theatre troupes rehearsing plays by Aeschylus, two young vagabonds roaming the streets of Paris hustling for money, and the emergence of a secret…
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Hiroshima Mon Amour 1959
“The day will never dawn again on anyone.”
The entangled arms of lovers. The charred bodies of Hiroshima victims. A woman says she saw everything in Hiroshima. A man says she did not.
The synthesis of word and image have never been more provocative than in Alain Resnais’ radical debut feature, Hiroshima Mon Amour, a beautiful and deeply affecting meditation on the nature and effects of love, war, and the malleability of memory.
Set against the foreboding backdrop of Hiroshima,…
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Paris, Texas 1984
“I wanted to see him so bad that I didn't even dare imagine him anymore.”
Seemingly birthed from the dust that surrounds him, a man wordlessly emerges from the desert, trudging towards an invisible horizon, his face weary and withered, his memory elusive, his soul haunted by regret and sorrow.
Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas is a melancholic portrait of a broken man yearning for reconnection with a family whom he had left years ago. But much more so, the film…
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Naked 1993
“You think you can recapture your youth by fucking it. You don't wanna fuck me. You'll catch something cruel.”
Mike Leigh’s Naked is a riveting parable brimming with a scornful wit and humanity unseen through initial viewing. The film chronicles the exploits of the sardonic and nihilistic vagabond, Johnny, a man who is first introduced as he brutally rapes a young woman in a back alleyway. Fearing the repercussions of his actions, Johnny flees to the streets of London. There,…
