Belgian director Chantal Ackerman was given a tribute an at the 18th Montreal International Documentary Festival. ... La-bàs is a series of long stationary shots out the windows, often showing figures of old people on balconies on the roof or buildings opposite. ... Ackerman in voice-over says she thinks he's watching the plants grow ...
"Là-Bas", Chantal Ackerman's Israel Experiment in minimalism is maybe more restful than boring Viewed at the Rouen Nordic film festival, late March 2007. I spent most of my time at the Nordic Panorama -- recent films from 2005 and 2006 -- for me the richest section of the festival. Among the ten films in this section three at least are worthy of special comment, the latest offerings from Chantal Ackerman of Belgium, Aki Kaurismaki of Finland, and Paul Verhoeven, working back in Holland again after a 20 year "leave of absence" in Hollywood.
Ackerman's Belgian entry "LA-BAS" ("There" or "In that place") can only be described as experimental -- with a captital X. Being of Jewish origin she was offered funds to make a film in Israel but could think of no appropriate theme or story. So, in the absence of a story, she set her camera up in a dark Tel aviv apartment and just let it run observing some people on the balcony of a building across the way in still life through half-drawn venetian blinds Some motionless sequences devoid of sound except for barely heard street noises run for as much as ten minutes -- an eternity on screen. An unseen narrator (the director herself?) occasionally answers the phone in French, and on one occasion in Hebrew -- apologizing for her deficiencies in the local lingo. We finally get out of the huis- clos for a few minutes on the beach toward the end. I would call this 78 minute film 'restful' rather than boring -- at any rate it isn't as boring as Andy Warhol's infamous eight hour motionless study of the Empire state Building. If not exactly one for the multiplexes it should at least offer great riches to Film Quarterly semioticians.
"Là-Bas", Chantal Ackerman's Israel Experiment in minimalism is maybe more restful than boring Viewed at the Rouen Nordic film festival, late March 2007. I spent most of my time at the Nordic Panorama -- recent films from 2005 and 2006 -- for me the richest section of the festival. Among the ten films in this section three at least are worthy of special comment, the latest offerings from Chantal Ackerman of Belgium, Aki Kaurismaki of Finland, and Paul Verhoeven, working back in Holland again after a 20 year "leave of absence" in Hollywood.
Ackerman's Belgian entry "LA-BAS" ("There" or "In that place") can only be described as experimental -- with a captital X. Being of Jewish origin she was offered funds to make a film in Israel but could think of no appropriate theme or story. So, in the absence of a story, she set her camera up in a dark Tel aviv apartment and just let it run observing some people on the balcony of a building across the way in still life through half-drawn venetian blinds Some motionless sequences devoid of sound except for barely heard street noises run for as much as ten minutes -- an eternity on screen. An unseen narrator (the director herself?) occasionally answers the phone in French, and on one occasion in Hebrew -- apologizing for her deficiencies in the local lingo. We finally get out of the huis- clos for a few minutes on the beach toward the end. I would call this 78 minute film 'restful' rather than boring -- at any rate it isn't as boring as Andy Warhol's infamous eight hour motionless study of the Empire state Building. If not exactly one for the multiplexes it should at least offer great riches to Film Quarterly semioticians.