Film or Videomaking

It stands as a mecca to 16mm film, and weathers the withering breath of a shifting climate. Bundled-up in opulence and optimism, the film festival goes onward and upward while I succumb to a glacial deposit that proves unflushable.

Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) gained international recognition with her three-and-a-half hour masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), which portrays a housewife’s dull existence and eventual violent action. She has continued to be one of Europe’s most innovative filmmakers with more than forty film and television projects to her credit. Akerman’s work is minimalist, structuralist, and feminist. Major themes in her films include women at work and at home; women’s relationships to men, other women, and children; food, love, sex, romance, art, and storytelling. In this interview from 1976 Akerman discusses her early films, and the development of her particular vision.

A young moviemaker discusses the horror film he hopes to open commercially. In the process he opens his lavish apartment to the hungry eyes and tummy of he who rots in the sidelights. During this discourse we feast on the vitality of youth as it restores life to the walking and digesting dead who bring maturity to both sacred and profane altars. Also along for the ride is a redheaded fleshpot in need of sudsy holy water for a good gargle.

Shot over one day, this program records the events and protests in Washington DC on May Day, 1971. This was the day when one of the most disruptive actions of the Vietnam War era occurred in Washington, DC, when thousands of anti-war activists tried to shut down the Federal government in protest at the War.

A feel for the mood in the city is gained during the first half of the video with shots of the city from a moving car in traffic. Protestors, city residents, and police are captured on tape, along with exciting and moving shots of the day's actions and arrests.

Subverting dramaturgical conventions in his Plot Point trilogy, Provost masterfully presents the man in the street as a film protagonist. After New York (Plot Point) and Las Vegas (Stardust) he takes his hidden camera to the hyperkinetic streets of Tokyo and reveals the mystery of reality. A serial killer, a rapist, a terrorist, a cult, the Yakuza, all have in common that their paths cross and merge into a powerful climax that can not be resolved.