Borderlands: Three by Chantal Akerman

About This Screening

Brussels-born filmmaker Chantal Akerman has been hailed by many as one of the most important European directors of her generation. She has made over thirty films, including the much-lauded Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Influenced by avant-garde filmmakers of the 60s, such as Michael Snow and Andy Warhol, and informed by both structuralism and minimalism, many of her films experiment openly with narrative and observe themes of identity, sexuality, and politics. D’Est is an elegiac photographic essay documenting Akerman’s journey from East Germany to Poland to Moscow shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. There is no dialogue or commentary, simply the stunning, atmospheric traces of a changing landscape a nd the uprooted lives that must change with it. Akerman has stated that Sud is, in some ways, a counterpoint to D’Est as she ventures into the American South, travelling into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia. Her encounters with the rich literary landscape of William Faulkner first founded her interest in the region, later augmented by news of the 1998 lynching of James Byrd Jr. by three white men in Jasper, Texas. In De l’Autre Côté, Akerman turns her gaze to undocumented immigration and US/Mexico border policy and, by interweaving eerily still shots of the Mexican urban landscape with interviews of locals as well as a US sheriff, creates a disquieting, compassionate, and beautiful film.