Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 347: Thu Dec 12

No1 Jeannne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975):
ICA Cinema, 7pm


Noted film theorist Laura Mulvey will introduce this A Nos Amours screening.

Chicago Reader review:
Chantal Akerman's greatest film--made in 1975 and running 198 minutes--is one of those lucid puzzlers that may drive you up the wall but will keep you thinking for days or weeks. Delphine Seyrig, in one of her greatest performances, plays Jeanne Dielman, a Belgian woman obsessed with performing daily rounds of housework and other routines (including occasional prostitution) in the flat she occupies with her teenage son. The film follows three days in Dielman's regulated life, and Akerman's intense concentration on her daily activities--monumentalized by Babette Mangolte's superb cinematography and mainly frontal camera setups--eventually sensitizes us to the small ways in which her system is breaking down. By placing so much emphasis on aspects of life and work that other films routinely omit, mystify, or skirt around, Akerman forges a major statement, not only in a feminist context but also in a way that tells us something about the lives we all live.
Jonathan Rosenabum

Here (and above are extracts)
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No2 The Phantom Carriage (Sjostrom, 1921): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.30pm



This silent masterpiece, which is playing as part of The BFI Gothic season, also screens at the cinema on December 14th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Multiple superimpositions and double exposures create ghostly effects in Victor Sjostrom's 1920 masterpiece. The story, told through a complex flashback structure, resembles Dickens's A Christmas Carol: a self-destructive and irresponsible man has a brush with the “carriage of death,” which allows him to review his life. With Sjostrom, Hilda Borgstrom, Tore Svennberg, and Astrid Holm; also known as The Phantom Chariot.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here is a comparison between a scene in this film and The Shining. Above is a trailer.

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