Akerman films come to Istanbul Modern

ISTANBUL

Between March 10 and 20, Istanbul Modern Cinema will present the most comprehensive retrospective ever organized in Turkey of Belgian director Chantal Akerman, a pioneer of experimental and feminist cinema who passed away in October 2015. 

The program of 16 films will be organized in collaboration with the Filmmor Women’s Film Festival.

Identifying herself as a “Jewish girl born in Brussels,” Chantal shot her debut film “Sauta Ma Ville” at the age of 18. 

Despite the fact that she rejected being categorized under a certain genre as a director, she played a central role in “women’s cinema” and was one of the directors who changed the course of the history of cinema with the new perspectives she brought to cinematic form and narrative. 

She made over 40 films, traveling from New York to Israel and from South America to post-communist Eastern Europe. Searching for traces of her roots and lost connections in her life, she spoke of genocide, rootlessness, displacement – in her own words, “what her mother couldn’t talk about.”

In both fiction and documentary she opted to not voice great ideas by straying her works from literal narratives and statements. Noted time after time as a major influence by directors such as Todd Haynes, Michael Haneke, Gus Van Sant and Sally Potter, Akerman’s last film, “No Home Movie,” had its world premiere at the 2015 Locarno Film Festival. 

The program in Istanbul includes the touching documentary about her relationship with her mother, her film “La Captive,” loosely based on Proust’s La Prisonnière, as well as her last fiction film, “La Folie Almayer,” adapted from Joseph Conrad’s debut novel and filmed in Cambodia. 

A documentary titled “Chantal Akerman: From Here,” in which she talks about her own art, will also be screened.