Join the BFI for a day of talks and discussions providing a deeper exploration of the various facets of Akerman’s oeuvre. The symposium will open with a Key Scholar Lecture by Ivone Margulies (esteemed Akerman scholar and Professor at Hunter College, City University of New York), presented in partnership with Department of Film Studies, King’s College London.

Events schedule

11:30-11:35. Welcome

11:35-12:50. Key Scholar Lecture: Both, On the Contrary: Propositions on Akerman's aesthetic of in-consistency

In this presentation Ivone Margulies (Professor at Hunter College, City University of New York) will explore the underside of Akerman's minimalist aesthetics. Looking at films from Saute Ma ville to No Home Movie, she will discuss Akerman's insistence in showing what happens when nothing appears to happen; the figure of the room-apart in her creative process; the instability generated by her obsessive, indecisive characters and eccentric dialogue as well as her interest in working through the silences and sonorities of her personal Jewish history.

Presented in partnership with the Department of Film Studies, King's College London.

12:50-13:40. Club des Femmes x Je tu il elle and lesbian DIY filmmaking

1974 was a very dykey year: 24 year old Chantal Akerman shot Je tu il elle, her most wilful work of lesbian autofiction, while in California, Barbara Hammer made her radically sexy Dyketactics. This clip-based session with queer film scholars and curators Ania Ostrowska (CDF), Selina Robertson (Birkbeck) and Ros Murray (King's College London) will show how and why 1974 still casts a spell on lesbian DIY filmmaking.

13:40-14:20. Lunch Break

14:20-14:55. Chantal Akerman: Girl, cinephilia and history

Focusing on two films, Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles and Saute ma ville, this talk by academic Elspeth Mitchell (University of Leeds) will take up the girl, a recurring figure in Akerman's films, to illuminate forms of cinephilia, cinema history and Akerman's formation as a filmmaker.

14:55-15:45. Chantal Akerman in her own words

Daniella Shreir (Another Gaze) will introduce some characteristics of Akerman's writing and will give a reading — accompanied by sound and images — of her new translation of Akerman's autobiographical text unpublished in English.

15:45-16:15. Chantal Akerman, visual artist

Curator, researcher and writer Jenny Chamarette (The Open University) will discuss Chantal Akerman's extensive work as an installation artist from the 1990s onward, including Travelling, her recent retrospective at the Jeu de Paume in Paris.

16:15-16:35. In Conversation: Daniella Shreir and Jenny Chamarette

16:35-17:00. Rethinking Chantal Akerman: Life and Legacy

Closing remarks by scholar, critic and writer B. Ruby Rich.