A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores and takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. Slowly, her ritualized daily routines begin to fall apart.
Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman's loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.
A woman suffers a subdued psychological breakdown in the wake of a devastating breakup.
Dr. Henry Harriston is a successful psychoanalyst in New York City. When he is near a nervous breakdown, he arranges to change his flat with Beatrice Saulnier from France for a while. Both don't know each other and both find themselves deeply involved into the social settings of the other, because the decision to change their flats is made overnight. Could be the perfect amusement, but suddenly Henry finds himself beaten up by Beatrice' lover and Beatrice is considered to be Dr. Harriston's substitute by his clients...
Three young women at a hair salon all like the son of the clothing store proprietors across the mall. Although Robby is selfish and shallow, he's appealing to Lili, the salon's manager, who's trendy and also the salon-owner's moll; to Mado, who's innocent and sweet; and to Pascale, who's intelligent but passive and downcast. Robby's dad tells him to grow up and see beyond the mercurial Lili, so he proposes suddenly to Mado. She's delighted, but the day before the wedding, Lili returns to give Robby another look. In the background, a Yank who was a soldier in France in World War II returns to Paris and tries to recapture the love of his wartime sweetheart, Robby's mom.
On a trip across Western Europe to promote her newest release, filmmaker Anna encounters several individuals—familiar and otherwise—and attends to their discontents.
Ariane and Simon met down by the water. Simon has managed to prize Ariane away from her friends, a bunch of free and arrogant girls, and move her into his place, with her own room at the end of the hall and her own bathroom next to his. He has taken on Andrée, one of the girls from the bunch by the water, to watch over Ariane, escort her wherever she goes and report back to him on everything she does. Andrée becomes Ariane’s accomplice. She’ll tell lies for her, and with her, and most likely they’ll make love together when the mood takes them.
Documentary about humans dealing with changing technology, the basic concepts of communication, cinema, and Akerman's mother, seen in her Brussels apartment.
Jack and Julie live in a bare flat in Paris. At night, Jack drives a taxi while Julie wanders around the city, and in the day they make love. One day Julie meets Joseph, the daytime driver of the taxi, and soon Julie is spending her nights with Joseph and her days with Jack.
Scenes of life in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
Furniture and clutter of one small apartment room become the subject of a moving still life—with Akerman herself staring back. This breakthrough formal experiment is Akerman's first film made in New York.
A tale of an occidental merchant, Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of riches for his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of his own greed and prejudice.
Following over two dozen different people in the almost wordless atmosphere of a dark night in a Brussels town, Akerman examines acceptance and rejection in the realm of romance.
In a remote, isolated Yazidi Kurdish village in post-Soviet Armenia, Hamo, a widower with a pitiful pension and three worthless sons, travels daily to his wife's grave. There he meets the lovely Nina, who is communing with her late husband. The two are penniless--she works in a local bar that is about to close down, while he has been forced to start selling his meager possessions. All seems hopelessly bleak, yet when Hamo begins to court Nina, their unexpected love revitalizes them.
All of the time and effort put forth to stage a musical is chronicled here in this bright and funny French outing. The story is set at a shopping mall where people audition for an upcoming show. Afterwards, they are seen going through the grueling routines of learning the music and rehearsing.
Chantal Akerman investigates the American Deep South through the story of a lynching and grisly murder of an African-American man that took place in Texas in 1998.
A married biology professor goes back to her ex boyfriend who is still in love with her. When a secret is revealed, she cannot decide between listening to her heart and her mind.
Belgian director Chantal Akerman avoids her usual "real time" technique in Histoires d'Amérique. The anecdotal nature of the subject matter compels Akerman to fragment her narrative, rather than offer it in one, uninterrupted continuum. Still, another Akerman trademark -- permitting the "drama" to emanate from the actors rather than the situations -- is very much in evidence. This informal history of Jewish life over the past 100 years is related in a series of eyewitness accounts, re-created by a group of largely unknown actors. Also known as American Stories, the Belgian/French Histoires d'Amérique began building an audience when it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival.
"Babel / Letter to my Friends who Stayed in Belgium" narrates the day-to-day existence of a filmmaker wandering through his city (Brussels) and who has a notion to follow in the footsteps of dramatist Antonin Artaud and visit the Tarahumara people of Mexico. This is a film about intimacy and friendship. Written in the first person, it places Boris and Brussels in the center of the universe, here represented by the crazy, vertiginous, endless spiral of the biblical Tower. It is Boris's diary and self-portrait. He plays himself on screen (as do the cast of a hundred who also allowed themselves to be "Babelized")
Life at the ordinary backyard in Yerevan. Two hours of non-stop jokes and music.
