The Museum of Fine Arts Boston presents The Films of Chantal Akerman: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

May 25, 2008
Event Types
Screening
Many screens installed on podiums in a darkened gallery.

Installation view of Akerman’s earliest museum installation, D’Est, which retraces a journey from the end of summer to deepest winter, from East Germany through the Baltics to Moscow in a series of inter-related images. In her minimalist style, the Akerman captures the transitions in a procession of imagery.

The Films of Chantal Akerman

The MIT List Visual Arts Center is pleased to announce this film program presented by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in conjunction with the List’s exhibition Chantal Akerman:  Moving through Time and Space.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1972, 200 min.), One of the most important films of the 1970’s. A rarely seen legend. “Like its blunt title, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, deals in unadorned facts. It’s as fastidious and deadpanned as its title character, a genteel, middle-class widow-and-mother who supports herself and her teen-age son by prostitution each afternoon.  Miss Akerman records three crucial days in the life of Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) as if she were observing the habits of some previously unknown insect. Miss Seyrig, though she has never looked more beautiful, is a fascinating, self-mockingly frumpy Jeanne Dielman, who is less a character than some nightmarish representation of a woman.” - Vincent Canby, The  New York Times.