Description:

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
(Chantal Akerman, 1975, Belgium, 201 minutes)

One of the monumental works of world cinema, Jeanne Dielman has become an influential film and a feminist touchstone for a broad and diverse group of filmmakers, theorists, writers, and artists. Its structure is simple, but its impact is profound. Over the course of three days (and the film’s three-plus hour running time), we follow the life of Jeanne Dielman, a single mother who is turning tricks on the side. In deliberate real time, she scrubs a bathtub, prepares meals, and performs other mundane domestic duties. These scenes reveal both the crushing monotony of her life and her obsessive fastidiousness; they also valorize and give due attention to the kind of “woman’s work” that is usually invisible in cinema. Dielman is a woman trapped by routine, which is only broken by a shocking act at the end of the film. Writer and critic Gary Indiana has rightly stated that "Akerman's brilliance is her ability to keep the viewer fascinated by everything normally left out of movies.” It’s a devastating modern masterpiece.

The first in the screening series "The Cinema of Chantal Akerman: Time, Borders, Politics"