BE
Chantal Akerman explores Jewish American identity in this multilayered portrait of the immigrant experience. Shot in Brooklyn near the Williamsburg Bridge, Histoires D'Amérique takes the form of a series of first-person addresses delivered by a cross-section of Jewish New Yorkers, whose by turns tragic and humorous tales speak to a collective history of trauma, displacement, and resilience.
Oct 1989
Moshe Amar is a once poet and now a "businessman" who left his wife with their new born in Israel twenty years ago and spent them in the land of limitless possibilities trying to leave a mark of immortality but, up to that point, only got the marks that frantic debt collectors are more than happy to give. Tsach is the abandoned son who is now a skilled sniper in the Israeli Army. Tsach resents his father for both abandoning his mother for 21 years and not attending her funeral.
May 2008
Documentary about humans dealing with changing technology, the basic concepts of communication, cinema, and Akerman's mother, seen in her Brussels apartment.
Feb 2016
Three young women at a hair salon all like the son of the clothing store proprietors across the mall. Although Robby is selfish and shallow, he's appealing to Lili, the salon's manager, who's trendy and also the salon-owner's moll; to Mado, who's innocent and sweet; and to Pascale, who's intelligent but passive and downcast. Robby's dad tells him to grow up and see beyond the mercurial Lili, so he proposes suddenly to Mado. She's delighted, but the day before the wedding, Lili returns to give Robby another look. In the background, a Yank who was a soldier in France in World War II returns to Paris and tries to recapture the love of his wartime sweetheart, Robby's mom.
Jun 1986
Dr. Henry Harriston is a successful psychoanalyst in New York City. When he is near a nervous breakdown, he arranges to change his flat with Beatrice Saulnier from France for a while. Both don't know each other and both find themselves deeply involved into the social settings of the other, because the decision to change their flats is made overnight. Could be the perfect amusement, but suddenly Henry finds himself beaten up by Beatrice' lover and Beatrice is considered to be Dr. Harriston's substitute by his clients...
Feb 1996
Samy Szlingerbaum made his film Dakh-Brisel (Brussels-Transit) in 1980, thirty years after any Yiddish feature film had been produced. Szlingerbaum felt that the only way he could relate the story of his family’s search for refuge after World War II was in Yiddish. This Belgian-based filmmaker, deeply impacted by New York experimental cinema, gives us a masterful blend of powerful drama and stark documentary to tell the story of postwar European Jewry. Home, as it had been, no longer exists, and all that Samy’s family wants is a place in which to sink new roots.
Feb 1982
Ariane and Simon met down by the water. Simon has managed to prize Ariane away from her friends, a bunch of free and arrogant girls, and move her into his place, with her own room at the end of the hall and her own bathroom next to his. He has taken on Andrée, one of the girls from the bunch by the water, to watch over Ariane, escort her wherever she goes and report back to him on everything she does. Andrée becomes Ariane’s accomplice. She’ll tell lies for her, and with her, and most likely they’ll make love together when the mood takes them.
Sep 2000
The film narrates the day-to-day existence of a filmmaker wandering through his city (Brussels) and who has a notion to follow in the footsteps of dramatist Antonin Artaud and visit the Tarahumara people of Mexico. This is a film about intimacy and friendship. Written in the first person, it places Boris and Brussels in the centre of the universe, here represented by the crazy, vertiginous, endless spiral of the biblical Tower. It is Boris's diary and self-portrait. He plays himself on screen (as do the cast of a hundred who also allowed themselves to be “babelised“).
Jan 1991
Following over two dozen different people in the almost wordless atmosphere of a dark night in a Brussels town, Akerman examines acceptance and rejection in the realm of romance.
Oct 1982
A tale of an occidental merchant, Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of riches for his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of his own greed and prejudice.
Jan 2012
A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores and takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. Slowly, her ritualized daily routines begin to fall apart.
Jan 1976
In this thriller, a UNESCO translator stumbles across a group which is hiding and supporting Nazis and facilitating their travel around the world. She had been given an assignment to study the work of a writer who recently had died, and the conspiracy is revealed in materials he left behind. She comes upon a young man who is going through the writer's papers, and she immediately assumes he must be one of the conspirators. However, he soon convinces her of his innocence in that regard, and the two together begin a search for the ringleader.
Mar 1982
Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman's loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.
May 1977
On a trip across Western Europe to promote her newest release, filmmaker Anna encounters several individuals—familiar and otherwise—and attends to their discontents.
Oct 1978
Ana bolts from her wedding altar and flies from Venezuela to Paris to realize her dream of becoming a great opera star.
May 1995
Life at the ordinary backyard in Yerevan. Two hours of non-stop jokes and music.
Dec 1996
A woman suffers a subdued psychological breakdown in the wake of a devastating breakup.
Dec 1974
A filmmaker’s self-portrait, asking hard questions of herself and of us. Invoking Aurore Clément as a kind of stand-in or proxy, a glamorous counterpart to Akerman who sports a drawn-on moustache. What is cinema for? Who is it for? If the Mosaic prohibition on making graven images includes film images, then where does that leave a Jewish filmmaker?
Nov 1984
A married biology professor goes back to her ex boyfriend who is still in love with her. When a secret is revealed, she cannot decide between listening to her heart and her mind.
May 2022
All of the time and effort put forth to stage a musical is chronicled here in this bright and funny French outing. The story is set at a shopping mall where people audition for an upcoming show. Afterwards, they are seen going through the grueling routines of learning the music and rehearsing.
May 1985