CANCELED: Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Chazen Museum of Art 750 University Ave., Madison, Wisconsin 53706
press release: France, Belgium | 1975 | 35mm | 200 min. | French with English subtitles
Director: Chantal Akerman
Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck
Everything the movies omit: a single mother (Seyrig) cleaning, mothering, running errands, peeling potatoes, turning lights off, and waking up to do it all again. These actions elapse over what feels like real time, but through an accumulation of small, jagged details, the sex, suspense, and madness of the movies start to take over. Seyrig’s legendary performance embodies the film’s formal and thematic fissures, in sync with Akerman's immaculate framing, supple use light, and mesmeric editing patterns. Filmed when Akerman was 24 years old and with a nearly all-women crew, Jeanne Dielman is a watershed of feminist cinema, an unimpeachable classic, and a daunting, boundless work from all angles
A Celebration of Chantal Akerman: Between her wunderkind arrival in the 1970s and her tragic death in 2015, Chantal Akerman was widely revered as one of cinema's most vital and fearless artists. Drawing from art cinema, ethnographic documentary, feminist theory, Jewish culture, popular genres, and the structural avant-garde, Akerman consistently rejected labels in her pursuit of a rigorous, personal cinema. Investing minute gestures, plays of light, and time itself with meaning and emotion, Akerman’s films demand the theatrical experience. This series (re)acquaints us with the genius and audacity of this singular, pioneering Belgian filmmaker.