Was anderes machen (The Home and the Movie): Chantal Akerman: News from Home

silent green presents

With the festival Was anderes machen (The Home and the Movie), silent green takes the archive of Das kleine Fernsehspiel as the starting point for a historical retrospective, a description of the state and the question of the future of auteur film with events, an exhibition and a symposium. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the ZDF editorial office and the Arsenal Archive, television and film heritage will be commemorated together for the first time.

News from Home, Chantal Akerman, B/F/BRD 1976, 85'
A structuralist essay film that combines long, static takes of precisely framed images of 1970s New York (streetscapes, subway stations, house fronts) with a soundtrack comprised of urban noises and Akerman's voiceover. The camera keeps a distance and does not respond to what is going on in front of it. The noise from the streets can be heard, sometimes drowning out the voice of the director. Without emotion and in a monotone, Chantal Akerman reads 20 letters written by her mother in Brussels to her as a 20-year-old who had gone to New York to be a filmmaker - they are loving, caring but also exert a certain pressure. Throughout the film, there is a tension between the sound and the image, intimacy and distance, family and the world.

Introduction: Birgit Kohler

Film screening and discussion
Thursday, August 31
Start: 7:30 pm
Kino Arsenal
 

Was anderes machen (The Home and the Movie) is a project of silent green Film Feld Forschung gGmbH in cooperation with Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art and Film Studies/Media Dramaturgy at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. With the kind support of the ZDF editorial department Das Kleine Fernsehspiel. Supported by the Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin. Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.